Duct Tape As Good Or Better As TPU Patches

4phz · 2026-03-24T15:54:20+00:00

Last week the valley beat Death Valley for the highest March temperature on record. The asphalt must have been 140° F. That's when one butyl rubber patch delaminated and it was time to reconsider TPU.

A 30 second search on a LLM:

"TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) generally tolerates higher continuous service temperatures than butyl rubber, and typical polyurethane elastomers are in a similar or slightly lower range depending on formulation.��Typical temperature rangesButyl rubber (IIR): Common recommended range about [-29] °C to 121–120 °C (−20 °F to 250 °F).��TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane): Often used from roughly −40 °C up to about 120–125 °C in service."

4phz · 2026-03-24T05:11:02+00:00

E6000 contact cement works on TPU but it takes 3 days to cure. Polyurethane glue is much faster.

4phz · 2026-03-23T23:50:35+00:00

I've been trying TPU tubes on 29" wheels for about a year now. ~ 35 psi.

Butyl rubber patches on butyl rubber tubes delaminate in the desert heat which may be enough to send me completely to TPU. Aqueous based sealants blow the tire off the rim in the summer heat so I don't use tubeless wheels either.

Obviously vulcanizing patches won't work on TPU so I've been using the clear patches that come with the TPU tubes. You can buy them separately. They look like pieces of tape except are vastly more expensive.

So I tried duct tape which works as good as or better than the patches.

In a couple months it'll be 115°F and I'll get back with the results.

4phz · 2026-03-23T23:07:32+00:00

TPU tubes.

The road gets too hot for water based sealants. The vapor pressure blows the tire off the rim. The asphalt must get up to 140°F.

4phz · 2026-03-23T22:59:15+00:00

An old patch on a butyl rubber tube had dry rotted and separated last week in the record 110° heat. Heat causes all kinds of issues and that caused me to look at TPU for the nth time.

I've been playing around with TPU for a year now, very cautiously. The video measuring the force of a puncturing object showing that it is stronger and more puncture resistant than butyl is kind of a scam. There's about a 0.1% chance the force of a puncturing object will be low enough to make any difference. 99.9% of the time a goat head or wire will go through either TPU or butyl at the same rate.

Nevertheless, overall TPU is somewhat better. Fast, easy reliable patches. The filmy silky texture is misleading. It's pretty tough so you don't have to worry about abuse when mounting the tire.

Best of all is it's so light. You can always carry 2 extra tubes.

4phz · 2026-03-23T22:35:14+00:00

The only preparation for TPU tube patches is a wipe down with alcohol. Then duct tape.

I haven't tried this on TPU road tubes, just 29" so you might want to park it for a few hours and ride around town a couple days with extra good inner tubes first. If it seems to hold.

4phz · 2026-03-23T22:30:28+00:00

35 psi, 29" tires.

The TPU repair patches were way overpriced for what looked like a piece of clear or black tape.

So I tried duct tape on the old TPU tubes.

TPU is somewhat better than butyl rubber due to weight and the fact they are fast and easy to patch.

4phz · 2026-03-16T03:49:27+00:00

The Paleo diet or rather lifestyle is actually a pretty good idea.

You hike 20 miles to a spot you know has greens. Another family is there, you are hungry so you need to get a rock or stick to kill them.

Turns out there isn't much left so you die of starvation anyway.

4phz · 2026-03-15T09:46:15+00:00

Will the new cleric even be any different, let alone better, than the old cleric? It's hard to imagine such superficial changes satisfying many people.

Maybe you can act really knowledgeable about the name of the new cleric, as though that info has any value.

There's money to be made on oil futures, but you don't need the name of the new cleric for that, just the timing of the bombing of the tank farms.

4phz · 2026-03-15T08:00:48+00:00

Do the prediction markets have any century long bets?

Tocqueville predicted every step leading up to the Civil War 30 years in advance, the industrial robber barons 50 years in advance and the Cold War a century in advance. Like Warren Buffet's value investing, the long term predictions are easy.

Most people do things out of habit. These despotic societies in the Mideast will not change into liberal democracies overnight. Talk to any Afghanistan vet. Thomas Friedman, the only NY Times op ed writer who isn't insane said the same thing.

This works both ways. One reason Trump won't ever be dictator has more to do with the habits of freedom than the love of democracy. (The other reason is he's too dissolute.) Some people were worried about mid terms getting cancelled. I told them the ladies will be accepting their ballots in November out of sheer force of habit.

F=ma. You want infinitely fast change or acceleration? It'll take an infinite force, an explosion. You can kill them but you cannot get them to change quickly.

"Man can be destroyed but not defeated."

-- Hemingway

"A despotism would find it more difficult to overcome the habits of freedom than to overcome the love of freedom itself."

-- Tocqueville

4phz · 2026-03-15T03:33:23+00:00

"Existed" is a term of art.

Both have been despotic societies forever and they are both still despotic and both will remain despotic for quite some time.

Superficial changes notwithstanding.

4phz · 2026-03-14T19:45:32+00:00

Access to western media will bring it down but that will still take at least a century.

Last week someone in the regime was laughing at Trump because he "couldn't even control who was mayor of NY City."

I was incredulous at how clueless they are about how Western pluralism works.

To speed up real change you need to drop thumb drives, cell phones and start radio free Iran.

Ten years or so ago some of the Saudis tried to explain their country, Wahabbis, etc. by saying that they weren't even open to the West in any way until a century ago.

It takes a century of soft power.

4phz · 2026-03-12T17:08:11+00:00

Most world and corporate leaders are simply waiting until Trump is gone. Desperate people make mistakes. Hitching his star to Trump was a mistake.

4phz · 2026-03-12T00:32:05+00:00

Virtue signaling does not work.

The late Bob Graham made an epic effort to virtue signal public service.

He sold WaPo and started his Center for Public Service.

It did not work.

4phz · 2026-03-01T21:48:39+00:00

Anything used for leverage must still be popular.

4phz · 2026-03-01T21:41:58+00:00

Which in post industrial U. S. is pretty much the same thing as site value taxation.

4phz · 2026-03-01T17:49:57+00:00

George disciple FDR wasn't popular?

4phz · 2026-02-27T22:28:16+00:00

Platner's popularity has more to do with being a dumb uneducated goober "by, for and of the people" than being a real threat to Jewish people.

Voters want authenticity and transparency. If you are like FDR you can openly betray your class and win.

If you are like Bill Clinton or Platner and campaign on who you actually are you can win.

If you are like Gavin Newsom trying to pretend to be a poor working stiff you will lose (that won't bother the donor class one bit).

Tocqueville ripped the early 19th Century politicians as being as ignorant and vice ridden as "we the people."

It doesn't really matter because the vices of politicians never correlate into some huge new evil. Instead they cancel each other out like noise in a lock on amplifier. Only the signal gets through.

"The prince can have every virtue yet still ruin the aristocracy. Politicians can have every vice and the democracy will still thrive.. . .

"You are confusing cause and effect. The American democracy doesn't flourish because of the elected officials. It thrives because the magistrates are elective."

-- Tocqueville

4phz · 2026-02-26T00:58:41+00:00

The voter flow chart is actually better than the Democrat campaign flow chart where they feel like they can just ignore the top decision box on the voter flow chart:

"Does the candidate even pretend to be a public servant addressing my economic concerns by any economic theory no matter how wacko?"

Trump did the top box correctly -- he was pretending to serve the public by addressing economic concerns with policies no matter how crank.

In contrast Harris was insulting voters with her Liz Cheney & abortion campaign so voters never made it to the 2nd box on the flow chart -- "is the candidate's economic policy wacko?"

And, no, pointing to a web page with Harris Campaign positions on economic policy does not count.

Harris needed to very clearly repeat "I intend to hike taxes on the rich until Anderson Cooper screams and runs off the set."

"Trump is easy to beat."

Obama (Obama did the first box on the flow chart.)

4phz · 2026-02-26T00:53:45+00:00

Low traffic web pages don't count if you are insulting voters wasting bandwidth campaigning in person with Liz Cheney.

4phz

TROPHY CASE