Being huge fan of zip ties, it made me smile when reader Nico contacted us with a zip tie hack for a flat tire he came up with in a pinch.  His hack is reminiscent of the first option featured in our Eight Solutions for Riding a Bike in the Snow post.  If you have come up with creative hacks to deal with somewhat strange mechanical or repair circumstances you have encountered while far from help, let us know so we can feature on the site for all to enjoy.  Take it away Nico!

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Last Saturday I was out for a ride with my bike club when I had a flat. No big deal, we can fix that quickly and keep going. But I must have not noticed it right away and damaged my tire, because 5 minutes later my new tube burst loudly. We stopped again and saw what the problem was. The bead was getting dettached from the tire [photo 1 below] and the tube was getting pinched [photo 2 below]. Nobody had an extra tire. We had to fix it any way we could.

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The first thing we did is use some patches on the inside of the tire  to try to keep the tube in place.

It didn’t look like enough to me so I asked if anyone had some duct tape (I’m a huge fan of duct tape). Nobody did. Just a little electrical tape and some zip ties. We wrap the tape around the tire to keep it from bulging out and set off. This didn’t work well; we had to stop a few minutes later because it looked like the tube was going to burst again. We were still 10 miles away from home.

It was then when one of the guys had a moment of genius. Zip ties! Why didn’t we think of that first? That would keep the tire in place.

We put two zip ties covering the damaged part of the tire, cut them down, and I loosened my rear break so that the ties could move freely. It worked surprisingly well. I had no rear brake and my rear tire was inflated only about half way, but it got me home and I have a feeling that it could have taken me much further.

From now on I’ll always carry a handful of zip ties and a pocket knife with me!