How to repair a flat motorcycle tyre

A flat tyre on a roadbike is the quickest way to ruin a weekend, but thankfully repairing it either at home or on the side of the road is a simple and quick task with the right tools at hand.

In terms of tools, you’ll need something to extract whatever it is that caused the puncture, a puncture repair kit to plug the hole and, of course, something to re-inflate the tyre to get you back on your way.

The first thing to do is to identify the cause of the puncture. Generally, but not always, you’ll find something sharp has penetrated the treaded area – like a screw, nail or similar. And because these things – and the holes they create in the tyre – are generally narrow, it makes them quite easy to repair.

However, if you’ve identified the cause to be a gash on the sidewall of the tyre, or it’s something quite large or wide which has caused the puncture, it will be nigh-on impossible to repair and you’ll be better off trailering it to a workshop to fit a new hoop.

Once you’ve identified the culprit, in this case a nail, you’ll need to remove it using a pair of pliers. But as it’s coming out, make a note as to the angle it’s being extracted at. That’s because when it’s time to roughen-up and clean the puncture as part of the repair process, you’ll want to make sure you follow the same route – lest you might end up making a new hole and repairing that instead of the original puncture you’re trying to fix.

There are various types of puncture repair kits, but the most common one though is a three-piece kit that includes a:

Beginning with the reamer tool, insert it into the puncture, following the track of the culprit as best you can, moving the tool in and out to create both enough space to push the rubberised cord into as well as roughing up the circumference of the puncture to give the rubberised glue something to adhere to.

Take one of the rubberised cords and thread it through the eye of the plug tool until it’s centred within the tool, and then insert it into the puncture until the cord is pushed about two-thirds of the way in – you’ll need quite a bit of force to achieve this.

Once it’s in, quickly and forcefully remove the insertion tool; the small opening of the needle will allow it to be pulled out while leaving the rubberised cord in place.

Using a blade or a box cutter, trim the excess ends of the rubber cord, and re-inflate the tyre. You don’t need to allow time for the cord to ‘dry’ or ‘cure’. We used a small compressor attached to the bike’s battery to re-inflate the tyre, but you can purchase small canisters of pressurised air which are compact enough to carry with you.

Once inflated, use either water, or even saliva if it’s all you have, and wet the repaired puncture and look closely for any bubbles that might be escaping, indicating the repair wasn’t successful.

Once the repair is successful, the tyre will be safe to get you back on your way, but it’s a good idea to have the repair checked by a workshop, replaced with a mushroom-type plug which is a repair from the inside out or, if it’s nearing the end of its life, replace your repaired tyre with a new one.