OT Patching inner tubes in the old days.

[snowyowl]

Picking brains older than mine here
Back in the '30s and '40s when making do was the order of the day due to the Depression and the "War" (sound familiar?) I'm thinking patching the inner tubes was common and old inner tubes were cut up to make patches for usable inner tubes along with rubber cement and a way to scuff up the patch and tube.
Do I have this right? BTW this is for my bicycle and I dealing with 60 -- 85 psi.
Any other insights here folks?

[JerryB]

We always had a couple of cans of Camel tire patch in the trunk of the car with the tire tools.

[mescalero1]

Yes,
That was the way it was done, every one had a patch kit.

[kirkwood]

Picking brains older than mine here
Back in the '30s and '40s when making do was the order of the day due to the Depression and the "War" (sound familiar?) I'm thinking patching the inner tubes was common and old inner tubes were cut up to make patches for usable inner tubes along with rubber cement and a way to scuff up the patch and tube.
Do I have this right? BTW this is for my bicycle and I dealing with 60 -- 85 psi.
Any other insights here folks?

You could but patches from cut up inner tubes usually leaked. You would buy a kit and use the patches that came with it. These kits are common for bike tires. Not so much for anything else. I haven't used patches for over 30 years.

[kirkwood]

You'll need a roller along with the kit to do it right. It is basically like using contact cement. Once the patch is on, you need to roll it to get best adhesion.

[mescalero1]

They ( kits ) always had a little sheet metal rougher built into the kit.

[WinM71]

The ones I remember from the 60s came in a little cardboard can with a screw-on metal lid. The flat area of the lid was punched from the inside with lots of tiny holes so that lots of little rought bits of metal stuck up. You used this to rough up the area around the puncture. In the cardboard can was rubber material for the patches and a tube of adhesive. We never had a roller, so we used to put a piece of 2x4 on it & add a few cinder blocks.

[dr walker]

60-85 psi is quite high for old style patches, not that they wont work, they may just leak a bit. I recently bought a bicycle tube patch kit with 20 patches, $3 and change, yes from Wal-mart. They are just these clear little stickers and a little metal disk for roughing up the tube. I run my tires at 90 PSI, no problems of any kind in the last 150 miles.

[rost495]

Just buy a bike patch kit at a quality bike store. My wife runs 115/120 and we've found in the long run a non wally world kit to be totally reliable, while the wally world ones are iffy at times. Can't afford that in a triathlon or duathlon. Kills time bad.

jeff

[Kansas Ed]

To do it correctly you need to patch it from the inside so the air pressure holds it on.
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Gotcha....

Ed

[bsaride]

I remember that, sorta...

Sometimes we would light the rubber cement and get some heat before putting the patch on.

[Rusty]

Snowyowl,
Welcome to the board, and I like your Bill Mauldin avatar.


Another really important thing to consider on a bike, the difference between a really good patch and a cheap patch is that a good quality patch like from a bike shop as opposed to something from Wally World is that on the good patches the edges are more tapered or feathered from the center to the edges. that way you don't get as much of a bump.

We still use hot patches on our tractor trailer tires. They buff the inside of the tire with a die grinder then heat the tire before putting on a patch on the inside. We use 95 PSI in all our tires.

[Doc Hudson]

As a kid in the late 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with the Camel brand hot patches, and in later years graduated to the chemical cold patches.

With tubeless tires, I don't even know if anyone still makes the tube patches for general sale any more.

I remember back in the early 1970's I was working in a tire shop. And elderly farmer brought in a bunch of tires to be aired up and patched before peanut picking started. One tire was an ancient Uniroyal tire with a red natural rubber tube covered in patches. The old farmer told me that it had been the spare tire on a new 1948 Chevy pickup that he'd bought. It was still soldiering on 25 years later. I always wondered how many more years that old tire lasted, and how many more years the old farmer lasted for that matter.

[marlinman93]

We patched a lot of tubes when I was a kid. My Dad always lit the rubber cement to vulcanize the surface and get a better bond, but today's cements don't work well when lit and vulcanized. Must be different quality. We sanded or used the lid of the patch can to rough up the surface, but we just used the can to roll the patch on. Simply lay the tube on a flat surface, apply the aptch, and then roll it like you were rolling dough.
We never used old tubes for patching, but we did use old tubes as a liner inside the bike's tire. This gave an extra layer of protection to avoid getting so many flats.

[Nate Kiowa Jones]

As a kid in the late 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with the Camel brand hot patches, and in later years graduated to the chemical cold patches.

With tubeless tires, I don't even know if anyone still makes the tube patches for general sale any more.

I remember back in the early 1970's I was working in a tire shop. And elderly farmer brought in a bunch of tires to be aired up and patched before peanut picking started. One tire was an ancient Uniroyal tire with a red natural rubber tube covered in patches. The old farmer told me that it had been the spare tire on a new 1948 Chevy pickup that he'd bought. It was still soldiering on 25 years later. I always wondered how many more years that old tire lasted, and how many more years the old farmer lasted for that matter.

Hi Doc, I was wondering if anyone remembered the hot patches. I grew up helping my dad patch tires and we used the hot patches. We had 18 wheelers before they were equiped with tubeless tires. The cold patches did ok in a pinch but the hot patch was much better. But, you had to be able to get the tube into the clamp that holds the hot patch while it burns and cools. The little portable clamps didn't work well on most truck tubes. We had a big bench mounted clamp that worked for the big patches too. Patches as big as 6", boots I think they were called.

[Doc Hudson]

Hi Doc, I was wondering if anyone remembered the hot patches. I grew up helping my dad patch tires and we used the hot patches. We had 18 wheelers before they were equiped with tubeless tires. The cold patches did ok in a pinch but the hot patch was much better. But, you had to be able to get the tube into the clamp that holds the hot patch while it burns and cools. The little portable clamps didn't work well on most truck tubes. We had a big bench mounted clamp that worked for the big patches too. Patches as big as 6", boots I think they were called.

Yeah, the tire shop I worked in had one of the big bench mounted clamps as well. For the really big tires, we'd use a C-type clamp for hot patches.

I can remember a few occasions when we'd install a liner in tractor tires when the owner couldn't afford a new tire. The liners were boots that covered the entire inside of the tire. If we didn't fit the liner just right, it would pinch the tube and we'd have to start over again. Sometimes we'd even bolt the liners or larger boots to the tires. We'd drill through the tire just below the bead and through the liner as well. We'd attach the liner to the tire with panhead bolts, with the heads inside of course. Those liners would generally give another season of life to an old tractor tire.

I remember one large tractor tire brought in that had a hold at least 2-3" in diameter in the sidewall. The farmer couldn't afford a new tire so we bolted on a triple thickness boot and he ran with it. IIRC he had several flats that summer, mostly from plum thorns, but some were simple sand cuts from where sand had worked in between the tire and the boot.

I got out of the tire business just as tubless truck tires were starting to catch on. Jesus, Mary and Joseph but I hated tubeless truck tires!

I'd better quit before I start reminiscing about some of the funnier things that happened in that old tire shop.

[KCSO]

The best tire patching kits were the vulcanizing kits. You clamped a patch on a cleaned and roughened are and then lit the patch back with a match. As the patch heated it glued itself to the tube and never came off. The cheaper kits had a roughener, glue and patches and a roller. You placed the patch on the tube and then rolled it down to even out the glue and let it dry. The worst part was pumping up the tire with a hand pump. You haven't lived till you have inflated a tractor tire with a hand pump!

[Doc Hudson]

You haven't lived till you have inflated a tractor tire with a hand pump!

Handpumps are one part of the "Good Ol' Days" I can do without!

[Old Shatterhand]

On this side of the Pool we still use patches, if we got a flat bicycle tire. But a little box with rubber solution, patches an a bit of sandpaper costs almost as much as a new inner tube.

[mescalero1]

I did not know you COULD inflate a tractor tire with a handpump!

[marlinman93]

We learned how tough it was to use a hand pump when a friend and I let the air out of a neighbor's car tires as kids. We thought it was pretty funny at the time, but when he caught us and made us pump all four tires back up by hand, we weren't laughing nearly as hard. We felt pretty lucky back then, as he could have told our dads and the punishment would have been much worse!

[mescalero1]

I think my old man would have just shot me, and been done with it.

[KCSO]

On the farm we had a pump that mounted on the PTO of a J/D B tractor. It was low volume and it took forever to pump up a tire but at least you weren't pumping by hand. One day my Uncle patched a truck tire and cranked up the B and hooked up the pump. He knew it would take a while to build up to 40 pounds so he went into the shop to do something else...
You got it, he forgot about the truck tire till we heard a loud boom and a chunk of tread went through the side of the shop. That lesson hit home for sure!

I had to go look I still have the tine container and the clamps from my Grandfathers old Acme tire patching kit I haven't seen patches for one of these in 30 years.