If you ride a bike, sooner or later you're going to get a flat tire.

Luckily, if you have the right tools and a little experience, you'll be back on the road or trail in no time.

To change a flat, you'll need:

• a new inner tube (or a patch kit)
• an air pump (or some other way to inflate the tube)

Ideally, you'll also have a set of tire levers, but with strong thumbs or a little practice you can get away without them.

Changing a flat bicycle tire is easy. We'll walk you through the steps below, but the following video shows you how:

1. Remove the wheel from the bike.
   • If you have rim brakes, you'll probably need to loosen the brake a little bit to slide the wheel out. For linear pull or v-brakes, squeeze the top of the brake arms together in order to unhook the cable. For cantilever brakes, look for a small lever on the brake arms.
   • Loosen the wheel by opening and turning the quick release lever or, if you don't have quick release hubs, use a wrench to loosen the locking nut.
2. Remove the tire from the wheel. Now that you have the wheel off of the bike, use a tire lever to pry the tire's bead over the top of the rim. Once you have one part of the tire over the rim, slide the tire lever along the entire circumference of the rim in order to fully loosen the tire. Note that you don't need to completely remove the tire from the wheel, one side will do it.
3. Remove the punctured inner tube from the wheel If necessary, unscrew the nut holding the stem against the rim at the point where the stem pokes through the rim. Then simply pull the tube from the tire. If your flat was caused by a puncture, check the tire to make sure the object that punctured your tire isn't still stuck in your tire, otherwise you'll ruin another tube. Puncture flats are often caused by small bits of glass or short thorns.
4. Insert the new (or patched) inner tube Insert the stem of the new tube into the hole in the rim (and tighten it down with the nut if there is one). Then "stuff" the new tube inside the tire, making sure there aren't any bends or kinks as you do so. You may find the new tube easier to work with if you inflate it slightly.
5. Pull the tire back onto the rim, covering the new tube. Use your thumbs and when necessary, a tire lever, to push the bead of the tire back over the rim. Make sure no part of the inner tube is stuck between the tire and rim. Note that it is conventional to center the logo on the tire around the point on the rim where the stem on the tube pokes through.
6. Inflate the tube. I like to inflate the tire before putting the wheel back on the bike, both because it is a little easier to do and because sometimes a problem occurs during inflation (such as a second puncture or a broken stem) that requires the tube to be replaced again. But if you had to deflate the tire in order to remove the wheel from the bike, you may want to replace the wheel before inflating the tube.
7. Replace the wheel. Put the wheel back on the bike, making sure to tighten the quick release lever (or nut on non-quick release bikes) and be extra sure to tighten the brake arms again. You don't want to discover your brakes aren't tight when you go to use them.

Here's another great video that demonstrates the tire changing process: