Long before the dawn of tubeless tyres and stickers that took no time to stick up a punctured tube, there existed on the roads of Bangalore city small shops that used to do the repairs of punctures. many a bangaloreans would remember them to be the puncher angadi;s { puncher is Puncture and Angadi is Shop }
We don’t find them anymore and i would imagine, its yet another roadside easy trade that has been eaten away by the developments in technology. These shops used various mechanisms to ready a damaged tube. Let me just step them out…
- Remove the tyre from the vehicle [ any vehicle ]
- Separate the tube from the tyre
- Fill the tyre with air to spot the puncture
- Soak the tube into a bucket of water, then turn the tyre its complete circumference
- Use a chalk piece to mark the spots from where air leaks and produces bubbles in the water
- Dry the area marked out on step 5
- File the area to create a rough patch
- Application of the puncture fix [ different types ]
- Cut a small tube piece that will fit the size of the puncture, apply a gum / solution onto the area and stick the cut piece. Which is then kept under a vice and a small fire lit under the vice’s base to heat up the solution and enhance the sticking
- Stick the ready-made sticker
- Check the tyre for the object that caused the puncture, remove it and then spray some powder [most often its the common talcum powder] into the tyre
- Fit the tube back into the tyre, fill it with air up to the specified pressure
In 8a the vice plates later on started coming with a electric heated plate. In 9 the air filling used to be with those pumps that had to be operated with the leg, which then became motorized
The shops operated in dingy spaces on the road and were almost dark in color with all the fire and its smoke… these days, you find the MRF’s tyre center which are much posh but more or less doing similar activities and are more machine dependant… yet costly
Superb !!!
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