I’ve had some large pieces of metal take out a chunk of tire, and DynaPlug road plug was perfect. But too often they are too big on a road tire. So I’m now carrying bacon and KOM Cycling tool.
I feel I should mention that I sprung a random leak in the sidewall of one of my MTB tires (or was it both tires?) a while back, but adding new sealant seems to have more or less solved that issue. If the same leak keeps popping up, I will try patching it.
It’s pretty simple. Clean the area around the leak with a bit of solvent, apply rubber cement, let it dry a bit, and then mash the patch on. It’s just like patching a tube, except you can probably get away with not scuffing it, since the interior of tubeless tires is much rougher than the surface of an innertube.
I do wonder if the patches hurt my rolling resistance, though…
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i’m in this position 3 months into road tubeless. i’m using silca fibrous sealant, which did seal to get me home, but lost probably 30 psi overnight. i have a tiny hole.
i’m going to try an internal patch, and if it doesn’t work, a tube. tyres are way too expensive to relace early.
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Patching works fine. The problem is that anything larger than a microscopic hole is unlikely to be permanently fixed by sealant. Even below 75 psi. Eventually you get tired of pulling to tires off to patch them… I’m going to look into getting a plug kit with reasonable refills.
As an alternative, I just I tried smearing some RTV silicone on a small sidewall tear (caused by bottoming out because of other leaks) and that seems to work as well as using patches. Though it’s only been a few hours.
This might be the go-to for anything that is really small but sealant won’t fix. You don’t really save any time compared to patches, but it adds less weight to the tire and probably affects rolling resistance less.