Bike Maintenance 101 - How to Replace a Tube

Hi, I'm Rob and I'm here to show you how to replace an inner tube. The most common mechanical failure on a bike is a puncture and replacing an inner tube is the way to get yourself fixed and riding again. We're going to start with a flat tyre and the first thing we're going to do is make sure that one side of the tyre isn't stuck to the rim at any point, so just going to work our way around the tyre; making sure that it's not stuck to the rim, so it's nice and loose. Once I've got that, I'm going to start from my valve here and I'm going to push down both sides of the tyre, pushing down to the point at the other end, so I can get some slack. Once I have that then I'm going to grab a tyre lever and pop it under just the very first bit of the tyre and hook it onto a spoke. Then I'm going to grab another tyre lever and go one or two spokes over and do the same thing, pull that out, then do that again until it's loose enough that I can use my hand to unseat the tyre from the rim. Once the tyre's halfway off the rim, we have access to the inner tube inside, which we can then remove; making sure to be careful of the valve. Once we have the inner tube out, we need to check to see if there is anything stuck in the tyre that has caused the puncture, so be very careful and run your fingers through the inside of the tyre, seeing if you find any foreign objects. Once we've got that out of the way, you need to fit a new inner tube. To make our lives an awful lot easier, we're going to put a little bit of air in our inner tube before we start. Once you have some air in the inner tube, you need to find the valve hole in the rim, get your valve of the inner tube and pop it into the rim and then push the inner tube into the tyre the whole way around. Once the inner tube's in the tyre, we can reseat the tyre onto the rim, starting from the valve again and working our way down to the opposite side. So once you have your tyre back on the rim, you're going to have to pump it up using your pump. Fix your pump to the valve and lock it off and pump up your tyre to the recommended pressure as stated on the side of your tyre. If you do not have a pressure gauge, try and put enough air in so your tyre is nice and firm. It's worth noting that there are two different types of valve available to us. There's the car type valve, which is called a Schrader and a bicycle specific valve called a Presta. Make sure your pump is set up for the type of valve you have on your bike and that is all there is to it!