Do these things really happen?

Funny you should mention.



........There was this one time when I hit a mouth foaming seagull that was staggering around in the road. If I hadn't been spooked by the event I don't think I would have braked so hard and I'm sure my lever wouldn't have snapped causing me to punch myself in the face. I attribute the outcome to my modular helmet that few open distracting me from doing what was needed at the very moment the plugged front rapidly deflated. I still managed to get her up on the rear wheel but doing it so quickly spun the rear touring tire too bad and I went into a deathly speed wobble highside.

It was a complete fluke the seagull's beak pushed on the exact spot of the plug. Although I still went down it could have been much worse if i didn't have the throttle performance of non-ethanol premium fuel. Luckily I didn't break any bones because I was wearing full gear. There was just a little scuff on my textile jacket, no damage to my street fashion jeans but my favourite mechanics gloves were sadly wrecked.

Be safe out there people, rabid gulls are far more evil than deer which you can easily scare with a blast of an air horn or loud pipes.

 

Oooohhhh...We got a thinker here...I'm not sure you're gonna fit in around here.

I've ridden plugged tires to significant velocities with no adverse effects. I was told once that plugs are perfectly safe as long as the belts did not take any serious damage at the puncture.

 

I had the same amount of miles on my BT016 and got a nail puncture. Plugged it up and haven't had any problems for the next 6-7k miles.

 

Unfortunately, that tends to happen when you ride without insurance on a 1200cc R6. :angry7:

Glad you are OK. You obviously stopped by Voodoo Donuts and ordered the Nyquil Shot to take the edge off the incident. :scared

 

What???!!! Oh wait..., I still have my earplugs in . They are so comfortable I forget I'm wearing them.....,

Actually its so I can smoke weed, drink jagger and snort coke without taking my helmet off...,makes passing out painless

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its funnier when you mention it!

:secret: Dont say you gots 6-7K miles outa sports tire.....,its impossible!!!

 

Well I've had two getoffs while riding on ST tires and wearing a modular helmet. I would attribute both to poor judgement rather than any issues with the tires, and my helmet stayed shut on both occasions. And in one of those I scraped it up pretty good. As far as plugs go, I just replaced a rear tire which had ~10k miles on it and was plugged after about 1k, with plenty of spirited miles on it in between. I never had to put more than a pound or two of air in it, and that only when the weather got cold.

 

The only area of concern anyone should have for modular helmets isn't that it flips open, it's that they tend to weigh a lot more than a full-face helmet.

The force necessary to cause a failure in the locking mechanism is more than the brain you have sloshing around in your head can handle. We could take that sucker with or without your head in it and probably beat it with a baseball bat many times before the latching fails, but ultimately you are putting it through 20-times the impacts than a single crash (what it was designed to do) would do to it. Peoples impression of them not being safe is a bit of an overreaction IMO.

 

In 97.3% of instances where modular helmets popped open, they were found to have BBQ sauce in the locking mechanism.

 

The whole discussion on tire plugs is weak.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE..... yes plugs work, sometimes they fail too. Is it worth your risk? The cost of new well made gear or the cheap shit stuff from someplace you have never heard of before.... Its all good till something happens.

If you can afford the consequences of a cheap ass decision making process then go that way!

Personnally, i would never risk the potential life altering events that could occur. Sure plug to get home, till a new tire arrives..... but several K is to me like taking a big risk like that jackass in the cage who has has had that trunk spare mini tire on the car for the last 8k. "Hey its working still! I has never been a problem"....

Rule of thumb - normally, what you pay determines the quality you get and most say "good for 1 event" ....

 

Not the modular helmet problem, since I've never worn one, but definitely the tires.

Coming back from Fossil, in at 90-100 degree temperatures, spirited pace, and that grippy chip-seal, the rubber was coming off the tires in sheets and they had that nice rainbow color to them. It was kind of funny really, as soon as you'd lean the bike over, she'd start squirming like crazy. You could drag your hand over the tire and the rubber would come off in rolls.

 

Absolutely, you get what you pay for. Why is a car tire different than a bike tire? I get the obvious differences in shape, etc. But what is different about plugging a car tire vs a bike tire?

 

If a car tire blows, you probably aren't going to crash. If your bike tire to blows on t2 @ pacific?

 

Plug repair worked fine for the earliest tires, because the rubber was so thick it seldom split or cracked, it would just puncture. The tire could be left on the rim, a big time-saver.

When radial tires were invented, puncture plugs would cause distortion of the tire shape, and interfere with ride and handling. Patches, hot and cold, became the only way to fix radial tires.

You must remove the tire from the rim to patch it with either a cold or hot patch. Cold patches are cemented and pressed onto the tire liner with a rolling tool carefully, to prevent leaks. Hot patches are heated and fused to the inside of the tire with a heating clamp.

With new plugs that self-vulcanize and melt into any kind of tire, plug repair is now preferred again for punctures. Plug repairs cost from $2.00 to $5.00 and can be finished without removing the wheel from the car.

 

I've heard the major concern with modular helmets isn't that they might flip up in a crash but that padding material is sacrificed in order to make room for the flipping mechanism, and without that padding to disperse energy you instead get clocked by the metal hinge.

However, I'm not sure how much truth there is to that.

 

I'm obviously no mechanic.. But this is what they did to my bt016 a few years ago. Guy pulled the tire off the rim, ground the inside of the tire, put a circular patch with a cementing compound on the patch over the puncture. I don't remember if he put a plug in the puncture as well..

I'm not saying i'd go to the track on it, i'm saying my patch lasted for thousands of miles of street riding, some spirited.

 

mars i run with a moulder helmet and my hinges are plastic with metal clasp to hold it closed, i think u get more air movement threw them because of the hinges but other then that i feel safe with it, i would just make sure that if u are going to buy one that u get one with the metal holders to keep it closed, when i did my safety schooling the instructor was telling us that he had a guy with one dropped it off the desk and when it hit the floor it popped open and broke one of the tabs off...

 

To keep from stereotyping, be nice if he actually noted what brand it was.

 

lol he said he didnt want to put any names out there but it had the plastic clips that hold it shut, so im thinking it had to be one of the cheaper ones made. i run a shoei and there have always been metal clips.

 

King of the internet for the rest of the day.
Well done.