Used tear aid on a small cut. Wasnt all the way through but scrim was visible. It lasted about 2 weeks and an air bubble started to work it's way out.

I applied the tear aid, at home....on my trailer and used a roller to roll over the tear aid.

I wouldnt say it's super impressive but it worked for when I needed it.

I pulled it off and put a proper patch on it after I noticed the bubble

Edit: PVC boat

 

I've seen a commercial boat have it and hold well but a small tear/hole. SOTAR suggests an inner and outer piece of it. Tried it on a SUP the other week and thats too much pressure for it.

 

I have owned 4 Aire rafts (currently still own 3 of them). Between all of these, I have not yet needed to repair a leak on the Aire rafts (I have had to replace 2 valves to fix leaks on a really old aire super puma).

I do have 2 Tributary IKs. For the 2-person tributary IK, I have had to put on an internal patch to fix a slow leak, and I just used tear-aid, and it has held just fine for 3 years without further leaking. I consider that a big win, considering it took about 2 minutes to cut the tear aid and slap it on the inner bladder.

The most success I've had with tear-aid was on the San Juan river 4 years ago. We borrowed a 25 year old Achilles for my brother in law to row. It was 100 degrees and rising, and the boats were finally loaded and we were just pushing off the ramp, when a new hissing sound suddenly started from one of the main tubes of the Achilles. We quickly found the leak, a 0.25inch x 2 inch wear spot that had been previously patched and the patch had just come unglued, and I could see through the hypalon into the fabric. Under the heat and the desire to get about 15 kids/teens+ 9 adults onto the river and going, rather than unload an entire boat and start a long patching session of hypalon, I just pulled off the remaining previous patch and stuck a big slab of tear-aid over the whole rubbed area. Then I stuck one more on top of that just for fun. The tear aid stuck well enough to the old hypalon, and although it did bubble out, it held air well enough that I totally forgot about it. At the end of the trip my brother in law said he just needed to top it off in the morning. I didn't intend for it to be a permanent fix, I just forgot about it and it ended out fine. After the trip it got patched up properly. I do not intend anyone to take my advice here, because I think that Tear Aid is not advertised for adhering well to hypalon and similar materials (Is that true? I'm not sure). Just sharing my experience and what I felt was a huge worry off my plate when the weather was exceptionally hot (got up to 107 almost every day on that trip).

Since I run Aire boats, I like the option of being able to do a rapid repair on the river by unzipping, slapping on some tear aid, and pumping back up (and doing more permanent repairs later if needed). But I haven't had to do it for any of my Aire rafts yet.

 

-Works great on smaller stuff <2".
- Anything that would want an inside patch (>2") wants to get baseball stitched first, then tear-aided over.
-It bonds great to clean hypalon and is probably more of a bitch to get it off of that than most other fabrics. It seems to bond least to SOTAR fabric, at least the older stuff. Which may have led to my below feelings.
- Tear aid does not do great as an inside patch on anything large enough that its doable using it as such. I tried it on the MFS on a big nasty "H" ish rip and it didn't want to hold full pressure. If I had to to it again I would have done a real inside patch or stitched it first, then tear-aided the outside to save time.

On all but the biggest most jagged rips I'll field patch with tear aid. Bigger ,nastier stuff I think I can do real glue repairs just as fast that will hold better. Length and remoteness of trip could skew my feelings one way or the other.

In conclusion, I won't hit the river without a 5' roll of tear aid and I won't do big mulitdays without a 5' roll of tear aid and my real armageddon patch kit.

 

Agreed that it seems to work best on hypalon, but I think thats why they have type A & B for other materials? I'm in the same camp as Zach, if its big I'd rather do a glue repair. "Glue and wait makes you the boater you ain't"

 

B is strictly for vinyl and vinyl coated materials, so in the raft world, pvc. Everything else wants A.

 

On the tyvek side of things, it worked well to patch a tomcat bladder on a MFS trip. Oddly enough, the first time we inflated it, it still leaked. Once pumped for the 2nd time, it held great.

Ive heard it also works well on Alpacka rafts, which are the TPU material.

no experience with tear aid for me, but I carry both types, type B specifically for PVC rafts. I’ve used both types on various tents, dry bags and more, but no inflatables yet.

 

On the tyvek side of things, it worked well to patch a tomcat bladder on a MFS trip. Oddly enough, the first time we inflated it, it still leaked. Once pumped for the 2nd time, it held great.

Ive heard it also works well on Alpacka rafts, which are the TPU material.

I have used Tyvek to seal pinholes on the hulls of Alpacka packrafts. Works great if the surface is dried first. In fact, if you leave it on too long it bonds so well with the coating it is almost impossible to remove without damage. Some packrafters carry Flexseal patches as they can be put on wet surfaces without drying. I haven't tried this yet.

 

Per the instructions for Tear Aid Type B, 'full adhesion requires 24 hours'

 

This is pretty exhaustive, there's a second video

 

In his videos, to me it looks like the patch is just about ready to fail, and he actually does cause it fail at one point, which raises some doubts about Tear Aid for me.

 

I’ve done two different large temporary field repairs with type a tape. A 14” gash in a hypalon boat and a 8” tear in a NRS. Both with inside outside pieces. The 8” tear happened 3 miles below Mexican hat and it held air for the rest of the trip. I think it makes way more sense to do a temporary field repair with type a then try to glue in less than ideal environment. Also works great on dry bag as well.

 

This is Zach's field repair video. Pairs well with his video that Pickle added.

 

Tear-aid, duct tape and a bungie will get a snout to the takeout.

 

Awesome. That brings back memories of being 19yo on Cat with my buddys dad's Korea era snout doing similar things. If he would have kept that thing any longer than he did I would have retro'd all those basards with C-7's.

 

i've had good experience with two on-river repairs using tear-aid.
the first was to cover an old patch that had started to leak. the the tear-aid patch lasted the remainder of that season and it took some effort to pull off in the fall when i glued up a new patch to replace the old one.
the second repair was to cover a rip in a buddy's older riken bucket boat. the tear aid sealed even though the floor was still wet.
i've also had pretty good luck using the type B on older sled seat tears.
personally, i think it's pretty amazing stuff and always carrry appropriate types in my boat repair kits.

 

In 20+ years of rafting commercially and privately, I’ve used tear aid a handful of times and have always been surprised how well it holds. The only time it didn’t hold was a leaking seam - oh and the time I tried to use type A on my Maravia.

 

I recently used tear- aid to field repair a packraft and it held air until I got home to fix it properly. That’s all it needed to do.

 

related question- is there a good way to know when Tear Aid is too old and needs to be replaced? Specifically, I mean unused Tear Aid.

 

I don't use sections of tear aid if it's coming off the backer paper. Keeping it rolled and tight and out of sun helps