Tire Failure

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1974 Vespa Ciao in the shop

I admit I am living with one foot in the past and one foot in the present. The future and I never cross paths. My moped has a bad crimp in the rear rim from someone going over a curb in Mexico drunk on false love and tequila. Then a spoke broke so it was like riding a fucking Carousel horse down the street. I got a replacement spoke (real easy to find for a 1974 moped) but the whole rear wheel and chain assemblies have to be removed for this to happen. I did that since I'm finally feeling human and mobile and Spring has apparently arrived on January 20th to Texas (84 degrees) meaning humanity is totally fucked because the climate is completely upside down.



But to repair a spoke I have to deflate the tire and what do I find but a 2'' long nail sticking in the tube. For some reason, maybe the angle of repose or the material or God smiling on Oggy, the tire never went flat. Amazing. But there was nothing I could do but remove it and set into motion a shit train of problems. The nail had managed to puncture both sides of the inner tube so one patch didn't work. I could not find a 2.25x2.50'' x 17'' Italian inner tube so I spent hours trying to repair the tube with shoe goop. The tire side held up but the rim side wasn't flush so air managed to escape. Failure after failure until I finally used my emergency tire repair spray rubber bottle for the van. That fixed it. The whole can went into my moped tire and I reused the tube and tire. A bit of grease under the nails and I was back on the road. Unfortunately, it did hardly anything for my rim problem.
Then I really got crazy and tried to manufacture a head gasket out of aluminum foil. The backfiring woke up dogs in Houston. This engine is best with no head gasket. It has a cylinder to engine gasket but no head gasket.