The first tire patch kit I ever owned came in a big green box, had several patches of various sizes which were possibly made of old truck tires. It also came with a sheet of 60 grit sandpaper. The mild high offered from sniffing the glue while applying the patch almost made you stop caring you’d gotten a flat in the first place. Stoned on glue and hypoxic from the V is no way to mend a tire, and most times the patch would start to come off even before I pumped it up and I’d have to start over. Don’t even start me on peeling the clear cellophane off the patch.
The telephone capability of my iPhone is the least-used feature on the device; I email, schedule, text, voxer, browse, twitface, photograph, drop, forget, lose, and find my phone much more than I ever use it to place a call. It has replaced my wristwatch, alarm clock, and flashlight. For some of you, it has even replaced the cyclometer. All this is to say that in today’s view of the world, the value of a product is directly proportional to how useless its original function is.
By that measure, the Park Super Patch kit earns its place in the pantheon of the Reverence series by being more useful as a frame protector than it is as a inner tube patch. They are phenomenal tire patches – much better than the old orange-trimmed slabs of tire I used growing up, but who wants to use a tire patch, much less love one? Therein lies the answer; even as the world of Cycling irrevocably makes its departure from the tire and tube with one faction moving back to the tubular tire and another to the tubeless tire, these patches will continue to feature on frames around the world, dutifully keeping cables from scuffing paint.
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/frank@velominati.com/Tire Patches/”/]
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Way to go, way to rub it in! One of the frame protectors on my Tommasini just lost its stickiness, I went to replace it...and my tool box is bereft of more. Darnit.
But oh wait, I have a bunch of those PT patches and have never dared use one on a tube. Frank, you're a lifesaver with this framesaver idea! Nice.
(my phone doesn't do anything more than make/take calls. I love old Nokia bricks.)
Fan-fucking-tastic idea! Heading to the shop immediately.
And they are phenomenal tube patches too? Hmmmm, that is news to me. I'll have to try them again. But that would do away with the glue solvent brain damage. I guess I could keep a tube of the glue in the kit just to keep morale up on the side of the road.
Glueless patches are good for getting you home. Anytime I try to use one on the next ride they fail.
With the weight of those old patches, I often wondered if I needed to put another patch on the opposite end of the tube just to keep the wheel balanced.
On the frame protector: it seems the best ideas are obvious - after someone else suggests them. Well done.
@DerHoggz
Agreed. They always fail after a period of time. Also, good luck trying to make them work in the wet. I've gone back to the old style patches as I've found that they are more secure if done properly.
@mouse
My last use was in the wet, the Lezyne scraper that is in their patch kit seemed to do an okay job of cleaning it.
Incidentally, I have had more flats in a month on Gatorskins than the 5 months on Veloflex...
Excellent frame protector, but I'd never use em as a patch. Properly applied, the orange, solvent applied patches actually stay on...the stick on ones not so much.
Two words: Internal routing.
And what was it with peeling the cellophane off? Most times all it did was start to remove the patch you had so carefully just applied. I usually resorted to leaving it in place, justifying it as a means of preventing the patch from sticking to the inside of the tyre.
How many still patch their tyres? I do but get told off by the newbies that it's old school.