Aerostich Mini Compressor

A Long Flat Tire Story...

When introduced (long ago), Aerostich tire pumps and tire repair kits set new standards for efficiency, compactness and functionality. Thousands of riders have come to rely on this equipment -- both in the workshop and out on the road. Both pump and kit have been subject to continuous refinement and improvement. Now, the tire pumps 'on-off' switch has just been redesigned. Literally a small detail. Now a different type so this tool is even more reliable.

Have you ever needed to repair a tire on the side of the road? Here's a story from 2009 about one such experience:

Last summer I had two in-motion rear tire flats on my (street) bike...both only about a week apart. They were my first on-the-road flats in many years. Both were due to riding on dry-rotted inner tubes. My maintenance forgetfulness and ignorance. My bad.

Luckily no crash resulted. Somewhere over the years of changing tires I'd forgotten the lesson that one should always put a brand new tube in when installing a tire. I replace a worn out rear tire on this bike about twice a year. What could I have been thinking?…save money? Modern tubes don't rot? Uhhh…

Riding southbound on US 53, just north of Wascott. This road is now a fully four lane divided type, with a 65 mph speed limit, and that’s the speed I was going. Sunny and nice. Light traffic. About 2 PM. The bike started to steer funny. It was subtle -- as if I was riding on a worn-out road with depressions where heavy traffic had thinned the pavement. But the highway looked perfectly flat so I moved over to the center of the lane to check if it actually was the road. A flat tire was the very last thing on my mind.

Hmmm. Bike still wiggly. I looked again at the road surface just a few feet ahead. Hard and closely. Still looks flat. So I slowed down to about forty five and it seemed to go away. Then I sped back up and the wiggles came right back. Like the frame, swingarm or a wheel had somehow broken. It had been a really long time since my last flat. More than ten years...I'd completely forgotten what having one felt like.

And then I knew and slowed back down to about 30 and started riding along the paved foot-wide shoulder. In about two blocks there was, as if made to order, a little gravel side road. I took it and ten feet in stopped and looked down. The rear tire was nearly flat. I slowly and carefully rode another five feet to a good spot to park on the side. And now the tire was fully flat.

The next stuff was routine…but it had been a very long time since I'd done any of it: Bike off. Off bike. Hoist onto center stand, which was hard because the bike was now 4" lower in the back. Gloves off. Helmet off. Jacket off. A nice pile on the grass next to the bike. Saddle off. Tools out. Wheel off. Spare inner tube out. Tire irons out. Tire off rim on one side. Tube out. No apparent flaws. No nails in tire. Just a giant tear maybe a foot long. 30 minutes elapsed, but I'm not hurrying. Just keeping track…

Spare tube in. Tire back on rim. Dig clearance hole in sandy dirt beneath where the tire will go and slide wheel onto hub. Bolt on loosely. Get out engine inflator - a hose that goes from one spark plug hole to the tire. You start the engine, which runs fine on one cylinder and in a minute the tire is full.

Except the attachment that goes into the spark plug hole is ruined. Twelve years rattling around in the bag on the rear fender have removed it's threads. There is no way that will work. Plan 'B'...a bicycle tire pump strapped to the frame. It doesn't work either. I fiddle with it for fifteen minutes but the rubber 'o' ring seal that goes on the tire valve stem was all dried out and would not make a seal.

Back to the thing that works off the spark plug hole. I wrap duct tape on the worn-threadless end and put the other end loosely onto the tube - threading it only a single turn. Put on the riding gloves. Feel like Mr. Spock working in the starship Enterprise's reactor radiation chamber, taking a big chance to save the ship. Start the bike. Chuff! Chuff! Chuff! air blasts strongly out the spark plug hole. I'd forgotten.

The bike runs great on one cylinder. With my left gloved hand I force the duct-tape-improvised-gasketed device against the spark plug hole holding it there as hard as I can against the air blast while with my right hand I'm screwing the other end onto the tire valve stem. It works. 34 psi and two tries later I have done what felt like the impossible. Boy that little chuff-chuff inflator gets sure hot quick. Even with a glove, it was hot-potato-drop-it as soon as I unscrewed the other end on the valve stem. Bolt the wheel back up tight. Put away the bad tube and the tools and I'm off, gingerly at first. An hour and twenty, total.

Midway through all this, a Subaru Forester passed, heading into the forest. It was the only vehicle on this road the whole time. Twenty or thirty feet away I could see and hear the endless stream of Hwy 53 traffic whooshing past. The Subaru went about forty feet past me and then I heard the gear whine of it reversing, so I stopped levering and looked up.

An old thinnish, long-bearded man was driving, and when they were back next to me his wife was looking down, out of her just-lowered passenger window. I was on my knees by the tire, looking up at her. "Need any help?" the old country hippie guy asked. "No, I think I'll be ok." I replied. Steady eye-to-eye contact. Pause. Then we smiled at each other, and nodded very slightly. A moment of reflection both ways, then they drove off to their presumably reclusive homestead hidden place somewhere farther into the deep Wisconsin north woods. Just a few miles out of Wascott. My guess is he plays a fiddle.

I continued on to my destination, and enjoyed a nice dinner with some friends. Afterward, when I got home at about 9 pm I took all the tools out and removed the wheel, deflated and re-inflated the tube, and made sure the just-replaced tube was inside the tire straight. Then got out a brand-new spare tube and left it on the saddle, ready for it's place inside the bag on the back fender.

Tomorrow I'd replace the 'plan B' bicycle pump, the thread less Enginair 'chuff' thing, and probably the tube repair glue and patches, too. The torn and dried-out old tube went into the garbage. I bet it had been taken out, inspected and put back ten or twelve times when I'd change tires over the years. Never had changed that tube. Never thought of it. What a dummy…

Postscript, four days later --

The lesson was that twelve year old inner tubes are neither reliable or safe. They wear out just like the tires do, even if they don’t show anything visually like a tire does. The above tire repair happened on Sunday. The following Thursday I’m riding down Interstate 35, heading to Minneapolis at five pm, and about five miles north of Hinckley the back tires goes flat again. And again I ride along for a minute in denial or disbelief, this time thinking “I can’t be having a flat again -- I just had one.”

This time there’s no nice quiet gravel side road available, just a sorta steeply sloping mowed shoulder, and freeway traffic here is pretty intense. I am traveling with another rider, and again I do get the bike pulled over safely. But I cannot easily put the suddenly lower (flat-tired) bike on it’s side stand, so while I’m holding the bike I direct the friend down into the ditch to see if the ground is wet or dry or hard or soft. He finds a semi-dry, semi-firmer place about five feet from a semi-wetter semi squishier place and I roll the bike diagonally down the steeply sloping grassy ditch, stopping right by were the mowing ends and the tall grass begins. At least I’m not right on the shoulder…inches from the continuous traffic roaring past at eighty.

This time the change goes much faster. Probably about fifteen minutes, start to finish, without hurrying. Minutes before leaving I’d re-packed the fresh inner tube, the replacement ‘chuff chuff’ device (with it’s fresh spark plug threads carefully wrapped in tape to protect them) and a new bicycle tire pump. I’d picked up these supplies on Tuesday and Wednesday and an hour and a half earlier had rushed to pack them. The new ‘chuff chuff’ thing worked fantastically well. I’d forgotten. What a breeze.

The other rider was impressed. And so was another couple who had stopped a few moments later to see if I needed help. They were on a newer BMW, heading for home, which was Texas. Working away I was smiling -- it was as if I was giving a lesson on how to quickly change a flat tire on the side of the road. As if I knew what I was doing. Sunday's practice had re-taught me all the right moves.

As I pulled the still warm four-days-earlier-replaced ‘spare’ tube out of the tire it literally came apart in my hands. I could tear it in almost any direction, as easily as if it was a sheet of newspaper. During the years it had been inside of the little bag strapped on the back fender it had completely dry-rotted, even more than the one which failed the previous Sunday. Another big ‘duh’. What a dope. From now on, I’ll know better. I’ll become an inner-tube-fanatic, changing to new tubes whenever I change tires. Change your tube with your tire!

This whole experience got me thinking about the knowledge-base that underlies the entire tire/tube changing skill set. It’s a near-obsolete collection of information about task sequencing, manual manipulation and material science. It’s as if I am the operator of a steam locomotive or some other archaic mobility technology.

These days mobility involves very little of this kind of knowledge. Vehicles don’t come with tools or inner tubes. Many tires are now ‘run flat’ so there’s even no spare. Most newer motorcycle use cast wheels, and tubeless tires. Inner tubes are needed only for traditional low-end spoked wheels, since ‘tubeless’ would leak where the spokes pierce the rim.

When tubeless motorcycle tires go flat it’s usually due to a nail in the tread. The standard roadside remedy doesn’t involve removing the wheel. A pliers is used to pull out the nail. Then a reaming tool is used to clean out the hole, and another reaming tool is used to jam an adhesive-coated plug into the hole. Then the insertion tool is removed and the plug’s protruding length is cut flush with the tread. Then a small electric air compressor is connected to the battery and the tire is reinflated. Much less fiddling around.

Mini Compressor

This Mini Compressor surprised us. I was afraid that after a few years of bouncing around inside a saddle bag or pack this might not work when needed. I was wrong. (After once experiencing a flat in a fairly remote place I found both long-carried innertube-filling pumps -- an old Enginair hose kit and a 'backup' bicycle tire pump -- had failed. Those simple tools had both been damaged by me not packing them away carefully enough.) In contrast the little Mini Compressor has been working for our customers when its been most needed. Who knew that it would turn out to be so reliable?

- Mr. Subjective (12-12)