How to find a puncture using a mudguard

Here's a little change of pace from the usual old bike logos that make up the bread and butter of The Bicycle Safari. It's a little trick I stumbled into when my Hateful Raleigh Beater bike took a puncture yesterday morning. Strangely I haven't heard of it as a tip before, and google isn't showing much, so maybe this will be new to you too!

Rear tire was completely flat when I went to take the bike out, so tried my usual tactic of re- inflating the tube and seeing if I could hear the air coming out from anywhere. Unfortunately, no luck, and I didn't fancy taking the wheel and tyre off to do a more thorough job of finding the hole. But then I had a little brain wave.

Being my everyday commuter, it's got proper mudguards (fenders, if you like) and the rear one is a decent tyre enclosing full length affair. So I fetched a glass of water, and with the bike upside down, filled the fender!

My fender runneth over!

With a quick spin of the wheel, a tell-tale stream of little bubbles appeared from a near imperceivable hole in the tyre, now submerged in my flooded fender!

So then I was able to lever off that one section, pull the tube out for a quick patching, then back together for a speedy repair! Pulling this trick off with the much shorter front mudguard would be a bit more challenging, but maybe one day this little hack will help you out!