Slime™ pulls thru again!

On a whim, I wrote the company that makes Slime™ products an email about the punctured liner, asking if they made anything tougher than that liner type, and unlike most companies I've dealt with over the years, the representative was very nice, responded quickly, actually read what I wrote and responded appropriately, even when I asked questions about who makes their tires, which I did not expect an answer to! (Cheng-Shin, which also made the tires that used to be on my spare bike, now on my main bike to test tread and shape differences from my Kenda's).

She said that they don't make any separate product tougher than the original liners, but that mine were probably an old batch from before some improvements they've made. So she sent a pair of those new liners at no charge, and also threw in a thorn-resistant pre-Slimed tube. Due to an error in their shipping department, they actually sent me a pair of non-thorn-resistant pre-Slimed tubes instead of the liners at first, but she quickly rectified that and got me the liners (which are now in my main bike's tires).

I was going to just put the thorn-resistant pre-Slimed tube in the tool pack as a spare, but as I was re-airing up the tires after installing the liners, the stem valve on the last of my spare tubes I'd put in that rear wheel ejected itself from the tube as it got around 40PSI! So I swapped it out for the Slimed tube, and instead will carry one of the non-thorn-resistant pre-Slimed tubes as a spare (it's much smaller and lighter, easier to fit in the pack, anyway). No problems there, at 60PSI.

I really don't know what is up with the tubes blowing out their valve stems, but it must have been the entire batch of them--I think I had three of them, and they all did roughly the same thing, only varying in how much of the rubber of the stem came with the valve--the last one was rubber-free, totally separated from the stem. I'm hoping I will be able to repair them and use them reliably, but I doubt it--I will have to find a bonding agent to adhere the rubber to the brass stem. JBWeld unfortunately won't do that--it'll stick great to the brass, but not the rubber, and the same is true of most other adhesives I have around here, including one- and two- part silicones of various types. I'll worry about it later, since for the moment, I have two spare tubes, courtesy of Slime™.