My bicycle's inner tube had a catastrophic blowout the other day while toting Monkey-B to the Chinese corner shop in our neighborhood.
Luckily we were only a few minutes from home, because flats in Suriname aren't fixed on the roadside in 5 minutes for 50 cents like they are in Cambodia. After the shotgun blast went off that was my tube exploding, I came to an immediate stop and we abandoned our mission.
After a closer look I realized my brake arm clip had completely snapped, and a shard from it had completely sliced through my tire and popped my tube. This was going to prevent a simple tube patch as the answer to my problem, but a complete new tire, tube, and brake arm clip.
Suriname has all the inconvenience of the USA, but without the ability to order things easily online, so it took me 4 days and 55km to track down a shop with with suitable replacements.
Buying an original Schwalbe tire was out of the question, but luckily the only specialty bike shop in the country had Indonesian and Vietnamese clones of what I needed, so I happily settled for these cheaper options, which came to a grand total of $30.00 USD, not so cheap actually.
Looking at the picture above, it's easy to see the Indonesian company Deli Tire certainly took some design cues from the original German tire. For now we are still without transport because there is a stripped set screw I must remove before being able to remove the rear hub.
I decided to give the bike it's first proper cleaning since I purchased it, and this will make the installation job a cleaner one when I'm able to do it. After sleeping on the problem for a night, I think I will try to track down some JB Weld, apply it to an allen wrench I have, and see if I can get it to fuse to the set screw. If it works, I'll be able remove the screw and this family will be rolling again.
I must say I was a bit upset to see the bike shop that sold me a bike with a stripped screw preventing hub removal. They surely knew this when they sold it to me, but at least I had a delicious meal to enjoy from the lovely @sreypov. A little bit of Ital food put me in a better mood, so I give thanks to the wifey for that.
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