What do Harley riders do when their bike has a flat tire on the interstate or rural area?

I think they would probably end up pushing the bike all the way to the nearest Texaco station. Lol. (wink)

Most ride in groups unless they are just out for a local ride. They either have a breakdown van to minor repairs, or haul the bike back to town. If nothing else, they use their cell to call for help.

Since motorcycle tires play alot bigger role in safety (there are only two to depend on rather than four), they are ride-flats, meaning they uphold their structure even with 0 PSI. You can ride many miles on a tire with no pressure. It is not safe, and you can definitely feel the difference in braking and handling, but if it happened, you could sloooooowly ride on the side of the road to the nearest garage.

Hopefully you would be with another rider/ other riders. So they can flank you and protect you from traffic. You could still go 25–30 mph on a flat.

I’ve never heard of a group of riders riding with a ‘breakdown van,’ after years and years of riding, but I’m not saying they don’t exist.

We get about 100K riders through here every year going to Sturgis. When a club is making a 1–2000 mile run, it makes sense to have a breakdown van.

The newer bikes are not as prone to breaking down, but when you have 15–20 riders on 50–60’s era bikes, stuff is gonna break.

Whereas when people are riding real motorcycles they know how to do the maintenance that keeps their tires from blowing out.
Harleys are for amateurs.

I do all the maintenance myself, on my Harley Sportster, and on my Honda CBR. I can’t say I know the difference between what makes one of them more “real” than the other :/

And you can’t do maintenance on 1–2000 miles of road that can cause a tire to go faster than “maintaining” your tires.

The real in the deal is you don’t have to be stuck. You can call AAA if you have cell service. If you have a tube of Green Slime you can remove the valve stem and put the gunk into the tire and so long as you have a way to inflate the tire is should serve as a permanent repair, same way Fix-a-flat for motorcycles would do. Or, you can use a repair kit as described here.

I thought Slime and the like required an innertubed tire in order to work . . . I tried Slime on my motorcycle once, didn’t do a thing. And I’d say most motorcycles are tubeless tired. I could be wrong though.