[Black_peter]

I have had three flats in one week..
Well 7 days of riding as I needed to get the tire patched..
Each time I picked up a nail.
Each time I got to work and noticed the flat at lunch.
Each time the tire held air well enough to be refilled and get me home..
I guess I was lucky but I started to worry someone didn't want me riding to work...

[The CyberPoet]

Don't like the "strip-style" plugs ? I've had those in my car before , and heard of bikers back in the seventies who had LOTS of those patches in one tire .

I'm just one of those people who advocate the "better" solution based on technical merit, and believe that a mushroom-shaped plug would be better than the strip-style ones. Malloc is using the strips at this point and they're still holding.

UPDATE: So naturally all this talk about nails caused my tire to injest one. I ordered the replacement Z6's about 5 minutes after I found the nail -- and then we plugged it to hold it temporarily...
UPDATE #2: Still waiting for the tires (a week later -- they're coming via ground UPS from California), but the patched tire has held for 500 miles or so without complaint, including running over to BikeWeek where I talked to the Metzeler factory rep about road hazard warrantees, and he told me (little known fact): Metzeler will replace, free of charge, any Metzeler tire that gets a puncture in the first 1000 miles (1650km). Not far, but it's some good news We also talked in depth about them offering tire hazard warrantees, and he explained that it is a cost-issue; their cost is $12 per for a warrantee, and by the time the mark-up goes through all the different layers (distributor, dealer) it would probably be around $36 a tire, pricing their tires into another price category. I asked him to see if they could make it an optional add-on purchase at time of tire purchase; he said they had never looked at that option before, but he would bring it up (he also said that some places get far more nails than others; for example, in MN where he is, he's hit 3 deer but only gotten one nail in 11 years of riding).

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[DRGN]

the berryman tire sealer works really well and it wipes right off the rim and tire. its the kind that looks like.....well, a certain gooey, white liquid.
you still need air, but it once held air when the tire had a hole you could shove a no 2 pencil through.
its cheap too.

[DooD]

My last rear flat.....I rode home on.

30Km at about 5psi. She was a little wiggly, but the shoulder was wide.

[jhugh]

If I get a flat out on the road my #1 goal is to get the bike (and myself) home. Even if it's at 20MPH it sure beats pushing 500lbs. Then I'll replace the tire. I carry one of the 'string' patch kits under the seat - but you also need to be able to fill the tire with air - possibly many times if the patch doesn't hold very well - that's why I decided against CO-2 cylinders. Once the cylinders are empty you are done. I went with a compressor instead.
And the best part of all is that the Katana has a huge amount of space under the seat - so a compressor fits w/o any disassembly.

Looks like it's stock, right?

[md86]

Damn dude , and I though I carried alot of sh!t around with me "just in case" ! You win !

[WildKat]

good call jhugh.... Great, now something else to buy that I want !!!