Weightless tire liners
When the goat head thorns came out last fall, I needed some tire liners — but my P.3 is too nimble and tasty for Mr. Tuffies. Enter the Tyvek envelope.
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Dupont Tyvek is light, puncture resistant and very light. I cut some 9×12 envelopes into strips, taped them together lengthwise then put them between my inner tubes and tires. While everyone I know got zillions of flats, I have yet to suffer one.
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If your riding spot has thorns, spend $20 on a box of Tyvek envelopes and keep your entire crew rolling.
Or just use a free priority mail envelope (used, not a brand new one you can pick up at any post office 😉
Genius! where do you come up with ideas like these ? 🙂
We have a lot of thorns on some of our trails.
I’ve used this system for the thorns and no pinch flats too:
http://www.nsmb.com/gear/tubeless_12_04.php
I don’t know what is wrong with me because my very first thought was…
If you open the closed end of an envelope and then opened it out to form a cylinder, you could then make a straight cut (relative to the plane) at a very acute angle to the opening and form one long piece of paper (now tapered at both ends).
Off the top of my head, a 9 x 12 envelope would form a cylinder with a circumference of 18 inches and so would only need five or so turns about the longitudinal axis in order to make one 2 inch wide liner for a standard MTB tyre (allowing for the tapers which would also be 18 inches long).
Now you can REALLY haul the mail!
I am going to have to start returning my netflix movies without the envelope…
Chris — oh yeah, talk nerdy to me!
Cool, simple idea! I’ll have to try it, especially for my son. He takes a shortcut across a field of goatheads to get to his favorite jumps. I jut happen to have a roll of Tyvek house wrap left over from when we remodeled our house, too. I bet that most riders could get a leftover roll with enough material for quite a few tires from a construction site dumpster.