Our January Winter Social, held at The Sibson Inn, on Tuesday 20th, was themed on puncture repair kits and tyre inflators, organised by our Social Secretary Philip Wadlow.
PECAM Members attending, all bought along their own personal kits for all to try and share experiences with the various options of repair kits and tyre inflators.
Bob Armstrong used the equipment that PECAM Committee had in stock from a previous demonstration along with kits that PECAM members had offered up to try.
All the kits were tested on tyres kindly supplied by Lee from Mototyres2U.
The kits, on show during the evening, are all available on line, ranging from traditional worms or glue sticks to mushroom plugs, many of the group members carry different kits, ranging from self vulcanising repair plugs, which are cheap and effective, but they do have a tendency to degrade if not used, so require checking and replacing to simple nail screws.
The mushroom type was deemed to be unreliable and difficult to use, by those with experience with them.
The easiest and most popular on the evening was the plug nail screw, which was small to carry and easy to install at the road side and very effective, when tried on the demonstration tyre.
One PECAM member had bought along one kit Dynaplug, which was a very compact, all in one kit, which could easily be carried in a pocket, whilst no means the cheapest, but if you were limited to space would be idea.
Tyre inflators where also tested, from CO2 canisters (of which a fair few are required to fully inflate a flat – approximately 6PSI was achieved from one canister), the pumps demonstrated were all very good, again varying prices and sizes, no one was particularly better than others.
The evening was very informative and following the demonstration, it was felt that there were several good options available, it was all dependant on budget and space available (of which GS Riders have plenty of!)
Thank you to everyone for supporting the evening and for offering up their kits and pumps for a try, a big thanks to Philip Wadlow for all his time in organising the evening.