I had not heard of Mr Tuffy liners. They look ideal for rougher terrain.
You're surely welcome, Richard!
Truly, the Mr. Tuffys (no apostrophe) are a mixed blessing with the result being largely positive for me. Their design has been greatly improved over the years, but the overlapping ends and tire tread-to-road flexure assures you
will eventually get a wear-flat
from the liners rubbing through the tube (it is critical one match the liner width to the tire). My father truly disliked flats (even though I changed them when we rode together
), so he decided he'd like one permanently installed in his rear tire. He managed to go over three years without a flat, and that next one was caused by the Tuffy. Still, not a bad tradeoff for him. He decided to run his front tire without a liner...it is a Law Of Bicycling that front tires have fewer flats. Why? They're less heavily-laden, and you can usually steer around the hazard...just in time for the heavily laden rear tire to hit it square on, and then get driven in a bit further with weight on each rotation.
Tire liners do add rolling resistance, and I have found integral Kevlar or other belts embedded in the tires do a fine job for me in most circumstances. The exceptions are exploded steel-belted truck tires (which can happen anywhere, but mostly on the shoulders of major highways. The little wire shards go right through Dureme belts) and goathead thorns (which occur in certain areas of America's Great Basin and desert southwest). The Tuffys have proven very helpful to me in Goathead Country. I wait till I get my first thorn-caused flat, then keep the liners in place till I'm in the clear again, when I remove them and roll 'em up and return them to storage in the bottom of the panniers. Yes, I have found they work particularly well on rough terrain.
Goathead-caused flat prevention is a topic almost as controversial as wearing helmets and there are those who greatly prefer sealants. Slime and Stan's are the two main contenders, with Stan's getting the edge among many residents of Thorn Country. To openly declare my personal bias based on sad experience: I just detest sealants. I have found them to clog valves, ruin pumps, imbalance wheels, and cause all sorts of messy, horrible problems when they are called upon to do their job (it gets on the rim sidewalls and is flung from there). It is not unknown for escaped sealant to glue the tire bead to the rim and in my own experience, things go rapidly downhill from there (I found -- very rare for me -- they came with a language course). As much as I dislike sealants, it is only fair to say they really are The Answer for many cyclists, who seem to have had much happier experiences with them than I.
So far I have found the SJS kit really simple and of good quality
The great success of the Rema has spawned a host of imitators over the years. These often work very well indeed, and it is thanks to a Rema innovation -- thinned edges. Rema's particular claim to fame is the "feather-edged" patch, but the copies can be very good, and are typically identified by a thin reddish border around a black center.
All the best,
Dan.
