At highway speeds it took Michael a few seconds to realize the rear tire was flat and he was riding straight into California's Mojave Desert on a rim. Pulling off the freeway into a gas station, Michael looked at the rear tire and found a nail. Although motorcycle tires are not designed to work with plugs, Michael was desperate and stranded out in the middle of the desert. He walks over to a mechanic and asked if he had any plugs for sale and if they would hold air in a motorcycle tire. "Yep. It'll hold forever," replies the mechanic. Thankfully the mechanic had a tire plug kit that included: tar plugs, reamer, a needle with screwdriver and a razorblade.
Start by locating the hole. If it's not apparent, add air to the tire and spray soapy water and look for the bubbles. Once you find the hole, mark the spot with a marker or piece of tape. Next remove the nail, screw or piece of metal with a pair of pliers. Grab the reamer, which is a sort of pointed file, and spend a couple of minutes roughing up the edges of the hole. Next, remove a tar-plug, which looks like convenience store beef jerky, from its packaging and feed the tar-plug through the eye of the needle with the screwdriver handle. Push the tar-plug and needle through the hole. Remove the needle by jiggling it free of the tar-plug once you have a ?-inch of the tar-plug outside of the hole. Cut the excess tar-plug flush with the motorcycle's tread. Add air then spit on the tire to look for bubbles to indicate an air leak. This worked for Michael across the Mojave Desert but the tire picked up another nail outside of San Francisco. Since he was closer to society he stopped by a motorcycle shop to pick up some Slime tire sealant.
Slime works by sealing a tire from the inside with the benefit of not having to remove the tire from the rim. Rotate the tire so that the valve stem is at its closest point to the ground and remove the tire's valve stem cap. Remove the cap off the bottle of Slime, which doubles as a tool to remove the tire's valve stem needle, and remove the valve stem needle. Empty the contents of the bottle of Smile into the valve stem. Once that is accomplished, raise the rear tire off the ground and begin spinning the tire as fast as you can for five minutes; to allow centrifugal force to spread the Slime evenly across the tire. Insert and tighten the valve stem needle and re-inflate with air. A repaired motorcycle tire is at best a temporary fix but out in the middle of no-where you have to do what it takes to get where you're going.
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