Hi fellow Hiveians and Man Cavers!
Today here with a fun little DIY post for the little ones in our lives!
So one of the best things recently was that our (not so young anymore ☹️) toddler has gotten a bike off someone for free! We were like hell yeah, we'll take a free bike I don't care what it looks like. I can't tell you how excited the little man was!
One of the things I didn't realize for a little bit was that the back tire was completely flat. The training wheels and the tire were level to the ground so I didn't really think anything of it until he got stuck in a little hole and I saw the tire was flat. I went out and bought a little tire patch kit, knowing that he would love to help me fix his bike!
So I unfortunately don't have as many pictures as I would have liked for the process but here's what I've got.
What I ended up doing first is seeing if I could get to the hole in the tire without actually taking the whole wheel off. Anyone who has fixed a bike tire before will know that the rear tire is more difficult than the front because of the chain and stuff. The children's bikes are no exception, in fact they are more challenging which is a great thing because the tire won't fall off. I didn't mind having the extra work! You can see below that extra piece of metal on the other side of the tire is screwed onto the frame of the bike, preventing the tire from falling off if the bolts somehow get undone. I was really impressed with that!
I stuck a screw driver in between the rim of the tire itself and pried it loose to get at it. I pulled part of the tire out and inflated it but realized the hole was near the air flange after listening to it leak out when I inflated it and trying to hear where it was coming from, which was next to the flange, so I had to take it all apart. No biggie but always worth the try to see if I can do it without taking the tire off.
To take the tire off, I had to first take the training wheels off of course, because behind those bolts were the actual rear tire bolts.
You can see the small hole right there, really close to the flange so there was no way I could do that without taking the tire off. It's been a while since I've fixed a tire so I read the instructions and you have to scrape the rubber a bit to give it some roughness otherwise the glue has a tough time sticking. I roughed it up a bit and applied the rubber cement.
You apply the cement then the sticky rubber patch. What I made the mistake of doing the first time was holding it down for about a minute then figuring it was good to go and I put the tube back in and put the tire back onto the bike. I smelled it first, then I heard it. No, that's not the scenario of someone ripping some nasty ass, though it is eerily similar to that. (cracking myself up reading that, lol). That's me realizing that the patch had let go because I didn't give it enough time to set and become permanent. So I had to take all of it off once again, that was a bit annoying but that's what happens when you try to go quickly!
So, take it all off once again..
That's the little munchkin helping out! He has so much fun using tools, bolts, screws and everything. He gears up for when we are working, evident with the ear muffs lol he didn't care for the sound of the air compressor pumping some air into the tire!
I had waited two days for the thing to dry and set up. It said 24 hours should be enough but it worked out because we ended up getting some rain the next day so we could let it dry longer. Now that it was officially good to go, I put the tube back in and I reversed the process to get the tire itself back on. Using two screw drivers (can't show that holding the camera of course) I use one to hold it in place and the other one to pry the tire back onto the frame.
Got it all buttoned back up and gave it a good spin!
The next one I will be doing is painting the bike. I am thinking of making it a nice white or blue. We don't really care about the color but I think it will be fun to put a little mask on him and let him spray away at the bike and put a color on it of his own. We have to buy it of course, so that will have to wait for the next edition!
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