Tyre levers
| Tyre lever |
Comment |
Material |
Mass |
Standard tyre |
Tight tyre |
Very tight tyre |
Rating |
Lezyne aluminium (dd 2008)
 |
You can't put the lever behind a spoke so you have to keep pressing it with your hands |
Aluminium
Mainly good for stainless steel rims, watch out with aluminium rims, they can get damaged. |
14 g each
(28 g for 2 levers) |
ok |
ok |
Can't get it under the tyre bead |
4 / 10 |
Specialized ('pry babies'?) (dd. 1993, still available in 2010)
 |
They don't bend and can be inserted between tyre and rim with most tyre/rim combinations, and can be put behind a spoke so you don't need to keep it pressed yourself while inserting the other tyre levers. |
Plastic |
15 g each
(44 g for 3 levers) |
Very good |
good |
impossible |
7 / 10 |
Simson, steel ca. 2008
 |
-- |
Steel
Mainly good for stainless steel rims, watch out with aluminium rims, they can get damaged. |
25 g each
(74 g for 3 levers) |
Very good |
Very good |
Very good |
8 / 10 |
(Simson?) steel, old version, ca. 1960s or earlier.
 |
-- |
Steel
Mainly good for stainless steel rims, watch out with aluminium rims, they can get damaged. |
22 g each
(65 g for 3 levers) |
Very good |
Very good |
Very good |
8 / 10 |
Simson, plastic (sport version, i.e. for road bikes/mountain bikes, from ca. 1993)
 |
-- |
Plastic |
6 g each
(18 g for 3 levers) |
Very good |
Reasonable. |
Useless. Very tight fitting tyres such as old Conti Top touring are impossible to get off. There is too much force required which bends the lever instead of getting the tyre off. |
6 / 10 |
Simson, plastic (super sport version, i.e. for road bikes/mountain bikes, dd 2010)
 |
The old Simson sport version was slightly better because of its shape which defines a lever rotation point... (more on this later) |
Plastic |
5 g each
(10 g for 2 levers) |
Good |
Reasonable. |
Useless. Very tight fitting tyres such as old Conti Top touring are impossible to get off. There is too much force required which bends the lever instead of getting the tyre off. |
5 / 10 |
Park tool TL-1 (dd 2007)
 |
-- |
Plastic |
13 g each
(40 g for 3 levers) |
Poor
(very hard to get between tyre and rim, never mind under the tyre bead!) |
Useless
(impossible to get between tyre and rim) |
Useless
(impossible to get between tyre and rim) |
0 / 10 (throw away!) |
In general it's not a good idea to use metal tyre levers with aluminium rims, they will be damaged! If you're careful that won't be much, just some small marks, that you won't really notice on rims used with rim brakes. They can get noticed though when used on black anodized rims for disc brakes. Metal tyre levers are mostly of use with stainless steel rims.
Simson, patches with silvery plastic on the rear, translucent colourless plastic in the front:
These are excellent. Getting the packaging off takes a bit of work though. I've been using Simson's patches and glue since the late 1970s and they are excellent. Tyres repaired with these stay repaired. The patches last just about as long as the tube itself (more than 10 years is no problem, and yes, that is from my own experience) so multiple repairs on a single inner tube are possible (and this is commonly done).
Rating: 9/10
Simson, patches in some sort of paper (this was done for a short while, Simson doesn't package patches this way any more):
These were sold in the mid 1990s in a 'sport' (for road- and mountain bike) repair kit. Disadvantage of this is that the patches dry out because of the paper. Getting the paper off was quite hard if I remember correctly.
Rating: 4/10
Park tool:
The preglued Park Tool patches seem handy, but are poor. The material they are made of is incomparable to the inner tubes and after a year (while riding about 7000 km on that tyre) they have cracks and leak air. I'm not sure if this is caused by age, or use (i.e. the 7000 km riding on the tyre) or both. In any event, these are only useful for repairs to inner tyres you're going to replace soon. Sticking power of the patches is good, they will work very will for a reasonable while.
Rating: 4/10
Lezyne sanding plate:
The sanding plate included with the tyre repair kit is made from stainless steel, nice, but the edges of those little bumps are too rough, they actually cut grooves into the tube if you don't hold your tube completely flat... That's very, very bad. The shape of the metal is also not very good. A comparable one that I have (but from chrome plated steel, and very old, 1980s or earlier, possibly from Simson or Rema), is simply rectangular and ergonomically it is much better.
Rating: 3/10
Lezyne patches:
I proceeded to clean the tube carefully, then applied the patch. I let it all dry out (just to be sure the glue had done its job) for an hour or so. When I applied my weight on the bike, the patch let air go. I noticed I hadn't placed the patch properly centred over the hole, so I used another patch. It also didn't work. I then decided to use a trusted Simson patch. I cleaned up the residue from the Lezyne patch with cleaning spirit, which was surprisingly and therefore worryingly easy. It just removed comparable to removing residue from a sticker... Quite unlike a proper vulcanising compound which really bonds with the tyre. The Simson patch worked fine...
I have one more tyre ready to use that I patched with the Lezyne patches, but I don't like the look of how the patch ripples when I flatten the tube (the patch is partly over the natural edge of the tube). It will be interesting to see what happens with that patch, but I don't trust it considering what I've seen thus far, and I'm not inclined to use/buy Lezyne patches again.
Update 2010-7-13: I left that second tube pumped up lightly and after a short while it was flat. I then pumped it up lightly again and left it submersed in a tub of water. When I got back not too long later, it was flat and there was an air bubble at the edge of the Lezyne patch which showed me the tyre was indeed leaking air at that patch. So, result confirmed again, these patches suck. The rating was already 0, so that's unchanged.
Rating: 0/10
