On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:49:05 -0700, john <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>[email protected] wrote:
>> My rear tire held all the way home, dropping from 120 psi to 90 psi
>> without me even noticing it on the smooth pavement (d'oh!), but it
>> looks as if I need to put in a fresh tube and patch this one:
>>
>> http://i9.tinypic.com/5xsbmg1.jpg
>>
>> I just happened to glance at it this evening. That lurid green stuff
>> doesn't leave any room for excuses about just topping up the tire.
>> Looks like flat #16 in 120 rides so far this year, about one per week.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Carl Fogel
>
>OMG! It's upside down & steel rim (if I'm not mistaken. It sure looks
>like one) Double blasphemy!
>Specialized's slime may or may not be better that Slime's Slime, but
>it doesn't have that easy to spot fluorescence.
>
>John
Dear John,
Thanks for a few moments of sheer insanity!
My rims are 700c Araya, the kind of aluminum hooves routinely nailed
to 14-speed 1998 Schwinn LeTours.
(I have a small stable of such beasts hanging from hooks, all
trembling in anticipation of merciless cannibalization.)
Such rims are, as I said, aluminum. Your notion was absurd. Absolutely
absurd--here, let me demonstrate with this handy rare-earth hard-drive
magnet, which will ignore the alum--
What the hell? Bad magnet! Stop that! Let go!
The damn rim playfully grabbed my magnet, or vice-versa. Not hard, but
about what I'd expect from some kind of weird stainless steel.
I descended to the Bat Cave--
Er, to Fogel Labs Storage Unit #1, and applied my magnet to five other
700c Araya rims. Nope, nothing, zilch, nada--
Oops! The fifth rim did the same thing, embracing the magnet eagerly.
Nervously, I tried the magnet against a known box-section aluminum
rim, which was sitting nearby in a truing stand. The magnet promptly
stuck to the aluminum rim, causing my knees to quiver, but then I
realized that the magnet stuck only near the steel sockets. Between
steel sockets, the powerful magnet ignored the aluminum rim.
But there are no sockets or even eyelets in my 700c Araya rims.
Back up in the garage, I tried the magnet against my current front
rim. Nothing, no attraction.
But until recently I've been using Kevlar bead tires. The rear tire in
the picture, the tire with the two staples between the green drops of
Slime, is a new kind of tire for me--it has a steel bead.
Aha! The magnet happily grabbed the tire's twin brother, which was
hanging bare with no rim from a rafter.
And the fifth rim down in the Bat Ca--
Er, the fifth rim down in Fogel Labs Storage Unit #1, the rim that
responded to the magnet, has a steel bead tire, too.
Whew! Aluminum is still not magnetic.
As for the bike being upside down, that makes it easier to check for
stickers, staples, fish hooks, and other problems that are common in
my neck of the woods. I also find it more convenient on the road when
making frequent tire repairs.
I gather, however, that there are other theories.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel