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A flat tyre is the most common mechanical you will ever have, and for most new riders it is also the one they dread most. The dread is out of proportion to the job. Changing a tube takes an experienced rider four or five minutes at the roadside, and the difference between them and you is not strength or a special tool. It is that they do two things beginners skip: they find what caused the puncture before fitting the new tube, and they check the tyre bead is seated before pumping it hard. Everything else is just practice, which you can get in your kitchen this evening.
What to carry
You need four things, and they fit in a jersey pocket or a small saddle bag:
- A spare tube in the right size. The size is printed on the tyre sidewall in two ways: the old inch or French marking (700×28C, for example) and the ISO figure (28-622). Match either. A tube marked for a range (25–32) is fine as long as your tyre is inside it. Carry two on long rides; a second flat on the same ride is common because the cause is often still in the tyre.
- Two tyre levers. Plastic, not metal. Metal levers scratch rims and pinch tubes.
- A pump or a CO₂ inflator. A mini-pump is slower but never runs out. CO₂ is fast, but each cartridge is one inflation, and gas diffuses out through a butyl tube noticeably faster than air does, so a CO₂-filled tyre is soft again within a day or two. Top it up with a proper pump at home. Butyl rubber is used for tubes precisely because it holds gas better than most elastomers, but no tube is airtight.
- A patch kit or glueless patches as a backup for the day you flat twice.
If you run tubeless, carry a plug kit and a tube anyway. Sealant handles small holes on its own; anything bigger needs a plug, and a cut it cannot close needs a tube. We cover that separately in tubeless setup and repair.
Step 1: get the wheel out
Shift into the smallest sprocket at the back before you stop if you can; it makes the rear wheel drop out cleanly. Open the brake if you have rim brakes. Undo the quick-release or thru-axle, and for the rear wheel pull the derailleur body back with one hand while you push the wheel down and forward with the other. Lay the bike drive-side up on the grass, not on its derailleur.
Front wheels are easy. Rear wheels intimidate people because of the chain. The trick is that the derailleur is spring-loaded and wants to get out of the way: pull it back, and the wheel almost falls out.
Step 2: get one side of the tyre off
Let out any remaining air. Then, and this is the step that makes the whole job easier, squeeze the tyre all the way round so both beads drop into the centre channel of the rim. The rim is deeper in the middle than at the edges, and a bead sitting in that channel gives you slack on the opposite side. A tyre that will not come off with levers is nearly always a tyre whose beads are still up on the rim shoulders.
Hook one lever under the bead opposite the valve, lever it over the rim edge and clip the lever to a spoke. Put the second lever in a hand's width away and slide it round. You only need one side off. Pull the tube out, leaving the valve until last.
Step 3: find the cause, or you will do this again in ten minutes
This is the step beginners skip, and it is why "I fixed it and it went flat again" is such a common story. Before the new tube goes in:
- Pump a little air into the old tube and listen or feel for where it escapes. Note where that is relative to the valve.
- Run your fingers slowly round the inside of the tyre, in the same region. Go gently; a glass shard or a thorn will be sharp. Look at the outside too. Pull out anything you find.
- Read the hole. A single small hole on the tread side is a puncture from something sharp. Two small holes side by side on the rim side, the classic "snakebite", is a pinch flat: the tyre bottomed out on the rim over a pothole or edge, usually because the pressure was too low. Nothing is in the tyre; the fix is more air. A hole on the rim side without a pair is usually a spoke hole or a bit of rim tape that has shifted, and you should look at the tape.
Pinch flats are worth understanding because they are the one type you can prevent. Laboratory work on bicycle tyres shows that the deflection under load depends strongly on inflation pressure, and a tyre that is too soft for your weight and the road will bottom out on the first sharp edge. Our post on tyre pressure goes through the numbers; the short version is that wider tyres let you run lower pressures safely, and narrower ones do not.
Step 4: fit the new tube
Put a small amount of air in the new tube, just enough to give it shape. This stops it twisting or getting trapped under the bead, which is the other classic cause of an immediate second flat. Push the valve through the rim hole first, then tuck the tube into the tyre all the way round.
Now work the bead back over the rim with your thumbs, starting opposite the valve and finishing at it. As it gets tight, again push the already-fitted bead into the centre channel of the rim to free up slack. The last section is the hard part; if you genuinely cannot thumb it on, use a lever very carefully, keeping the tip against the rim rather than digging into the tube. Most tyres go on without a lever once the beads are in the channel.
Push the valve up into the tyre for a moment and then pull it back down, so the tube around the valve is inside the bead and not trapped under it.
Step 5: check the bead before you pump it hard
Inflate to perhaps a quarter of your usual pressure and stop. Spin the wheel and look at the moulded line just above the rim on each side of the tyre. It should sit an even distance from the rim all the way round. If it dips in one place, the bead is not seated there; let some air out, push the tyre in at that point and try again. If it bulges, the tube is trapped under the bead and it will blow off the rim when you pump it hard, with a bang that will make you drop the wheel. It is far better to find this at a quarter pressure than at full.
Once the line is even, pump to your usual pressure. Note that a tyre inflated on a cold morning will read higher once it warms up on the road, and one inflated in a warm room will be a little soft outside; tyre pressure and rolling behaviour shift with temperature, which is why "the same pressure as yesterday" is not always the same pressure.
Step 6: wheel back in
For the rear, hook the chain over the smallest sprocket, pull the derailleur back, and drop the wheel into the dropouts. Close the quick-release firmly or tighten the thru-axle. Close the brake. Spin the wheel to confirm it is straight and the tyre clears the frame, and give the brake lever a squeeze. Pick the bike up, and drop it from a few centimetres: if anything rattles, something is loose.
Why it takes beginners twenty minutes and not five
Almost always one of these, in our experience:
- Fighting a tyre whose beads are not in the centre channel. This one accounts for most of the swearing.
- Not finding the cause, so the new tube goes flat too.
- A twisted or trapped tube because it went in with no air in it.
- Cold hands. Manual dexterity drops measurably as hand skin cools, and a puncture at 3 °C in the rain is a very different job from one in July. Put gloves back on between steps, and on winter rides carry a spare pair. The physiology is covered in our post on cycling in cold weather.
- A pump you have never used. Mini-pumps have a knack. Learn it at home.
Practise once, indoors
The single most useful thing you can do after reading this is to take a wheel off in your kitchen, remove the tube, put it back and inflate it. Then do it again. The second attempt is usually half the time of the first, and the third feels routine. Ten minutes on the floor buys you years of not dreading it. Do the rear wheel, not the front, because that is the one people avoid.
A puncture is also a good prompt to look at the tyre itself. If you are flatting every week, the tread is probably thin or cut up, and a new tyre costs less than a season of tubes. Our maintenance schedule says when to check.
Tubeless: the same steps, different tools
If a tubeless tyre goes down and the sealant has not closed the hole, the order is: find the hole, plug it from the outside with the kit, re-inflate. Sealant works by coagulating at the hole, which is why it copes with small punctures and struggles with cuts. Only if the plug fails do you pull a bead, wipe out the sealant as best you can, and fit a tube exactly as above. It is messier, not harder. Keep the removed valve core somewhere you will not lose it.
Sources 7
Where this article summarises a study, the study itself is linked — not a write-up of it.
- 1 Grappe F, Candau R, Barbier B, Hoffman MD, Belli A, Rouillon JD Influence of tyre pressure and vertical load on coefficient of rolling resistance and simulated cycling performance · Ergonomics · 1999
- 2 Dell'Orto G, Ballo F, Mastinu G, Gobbi M Racing bicycle tyres – Influence on mechanical characteristics of internal pressure, vertical force, speed and temperature · European Journal of Mechanics - A/Solids · 2023
- 3 Hyttinen J, Rothhämel M, Jerrelind J Simulation of transient rolling resistance of bicycle tyres at various ambient temperatures · PLOS ONE · 2024
- 4 Massey LK Butyl Rubber · Permeability Properties of Plastics and Elastomers (2nd ed.) · 2003
- 5 Galembeck F Latex coagulation induced by alcohol vapors: an unusual factor for colloidal instability · Colloids and Surfaces A · 2000
- 6 Schafer EA, Chapman CL, Castellani JW, et al. Energy expenditure during physical work in cold environments: physiology and performance considerations · Journal of Applied Physiology · 2024
- 7 Occupational cold stress and rewarming alters skin temperature thresholds for manual dexterity decrements · Physiological Reports · 2025
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