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Ripped dark green tent fly with the yellow inner tent visible through the opening, red soil on the ground

Tent Repair on the Road

Even with very careful handling, damage to a tent is unavoidable in the long run. Thorns and other brush take their toll, and some things cannot be influenced at all: animals. On a campsite, cats once liked my tent a bit too much. In the Amazon, leaf-cutter ants badly damaged it.

Inside of a tent with the coating peeled off in small flakes along the fabric and a torn mesh section on the right, damage caused by ants
Leafcutter ants in the Amazon cut through the tent fabric. Seen from the inside, the coating has been stripped off in patches.

I have repaired almost every part of my tent on the road. This is how I did it and what I carry for it.

Know your fabrics first

Before buying anything, find out what each part of your tent is made of. Mine uses silnylon for the fly and PU-coated nylon for the floor, and each needs its own sealant. I buy replacement fabric at Extremtextil. It is far cheaper than original Hilleberg spares and nearly identical.

Fly (silnylon)

Tiny holes up to about 1 mm get glue only, no patch. Larger holes get a glued patch with Seam Grip SIL+. Longer tears are sewn first, then covered with a patch. Cleaning the patches and the area of the tent carefully with ethanol helps the patch to stick. Only a thin layer of sealant is sufficient. Best is to let the patch dry for 24 hours, but I also already repaired the tent in the morning and put a zip bag on the patch and carefully rolled the tent to use it again in the evening.

Overlapping strips of green repair tape across a damaged tent panel with mesh visible behind
Several overlapping repairs after years on the road. Sacrificial layers extend the life of the fabric.

When the coating wears out, I recoat the fly with Seam Grip SIL+ thinned with white spirit at roughly 1:10. Just neutral silicon works as well and is much cheaper. Around 25g of Seam Grip Sil+ is enough for one layer of new coating for each side.

Floor (PU nylon)

Same method, but with PU nylon patches and Seam Grip WP. Only once did I have to re-glue a floor patch.

Two patches on a worn tent floor with smeared sealant around the edges
The floor takes the most abuse. Patches here are the ones that occasionally need re-gluing.

Inner tent

Repaired with impregnated nylon and Seam Grip WP. Use only a thin layer of glue as it gets a little harder when dry.

Round yellow ripstop nylon patch glued onto a yellow inner tent, with sealant visible around the edge
Round patch with sealed edges on a ripstop fabric. Small holes up to about 1 mm only need glue.

Round the corners

Patches with sharp corners peel off quickly. Rounded corners hold much longer. So far, every patch has held.

Round green patch on the fly of a tent, backlit with condensation droplets on the fabric
A round patch on the tent fly, rounded corners so it doesn’t peel.

Zipper

When re-lubricating with PTFE spray no longer helps, the slider is worn. Open the seam at the bottom end of the zipper, slide on a new slider, and close the seam again. Mine ran smoothly afterwards.

Poles

A broken aluminium segment gets an aluminium sleeve, glued with a two-component adhesive. Hilleberg includes one sleeve with the tent. Suitable tubes are also easy to find on the road in metal shops or at markets.

What I carry

  • A piece of each tent fabric (fly, floor, inner, mesh)
  • Needle and thread
  • Seam Grip SIL+ and Seam Grip WP
  • A few spare zipper sliders
  • A pole sleeve
  • Two-component adhesive

For the tent itself and the rest of my camping setup, see my Camping Gear page.

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