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Well, after more than a 100k miles, I finally got my first flat puncture on the way to work this morning. I felt the screw go in the tire, less than two miles from work, and then started watching my TPMS pressures (09 Kawi Concours,) sure enough, it started showing the pressure in my rear tire dropping; I lost about 4 PSI in 5 minutes.
Pulled into work, put the bike up on the centerstand, and started looking at the rear tire. Sure enough, I had picked up a nice shiny screw in my week old PR3...
It's days like these, I'm glad I was running the bags and had the tire plug kit and compressor. Pulled the screw, made two attempts to put the plug in, then read the directions again (it's been a while since I've had cause to even try the kit.) Turns out I was forgetting that I had to shove the plug into the handle before it would go through the little hole in the insertion nozzle. So anyway, I finally get the plug in the hole, pull it back out and fully seat the plug. throw on the compressor and wait, then wait some more. (Little air compressors go slow...) I then sliced the tail off the plug so that it is even with the tread.
Three hours later, she is still holding pressure, and we'll see what happens after work today, because I have a fair amount of running around that I need to do. If it holds for that, then I'm leaving the tire on and will be testing it at the gap.
Shouldn't take me but a couple months to do a full tire life test on the plugs, and I'll report back. Just not feeling like replacing a week old $180 tire because of one little hole. If you don't hear from me for a while, I'll guess you'll know what happened.
Pulled into work, put the bike up on the centerstand, and started looking at the rear tire. Sure enough, I had picked up a nice shiny screw in my week old PR3...
It's days like these, I'm glad I was running the bags and had the tire plug kit and compressor. Pulled the screw, made two attempts to put the plug in, then read the directions again (it's been a while since I've had cause to even try the kit.) Turns out I was forgetting that I had to shove the plug into the handle before it would go through the little hole in the insertion nozzle. So anyway, I finally get the plug in the hole, pull it back out and fully seat the plug. throw on the compressor and wait, then wait some more. (Little air compressors go slow...) I then sliced the tail off the plug so that it is even with the tread.
Three hours later, she is still holding pressure, and we'll see what happens after work today, because I have a fair amount of running around that I need to do. If it holds for that, then I'm leaving the tire on and will be testing it at the gap.
Shouldn't take me but a couple months to do a full tire life test on the plugs, and I'll report back. Just not feeling like replacing a week old $180 tire because of one little hole. If you don't hear from me for a while, I'll guess you'll know what happened.
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