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Just can't get tyre bead to sit. If I put tubes back in will I be able to leave rim tape in and take to a shop at a later date and they should be able to take tubes out and use use compressor to sit the best? I.e I won't need to 're do the tape ?
Tyre lever method?
No tape stay on wheel, (sounds like you might not have the full story of tubless)
Say you are riding the bike tubeless, and the tyre goes down, you can just fix it like a normal puncture, just remove the tubeless valve out of the hole and fit the inner tube, no need to remove tape, you can use it with inner tube or tubeless.
Inflating Have you removed the inner core of the tubeless valve? It will help a lot, if still hard to pop the tyre on, soapy water on the tyre bead should help.
Park up by a service station pump, with suitable adapter, nip round "checking the car wheels" and accidentally connect it to the 2 bike wheels in the boot?
You won't be the first....
Or use cable ties/ ratchet strap around the circumference of the tyre to force bead to edges then try again?
Try a wheel size smaller inner tube, wrap round circumference again, inflate, which will force beads to edge as above... Then try again.
It's worth keeping at it as it's such a sublime feeling of satisfaction when you get it sorted. Lol 😃
mount the tyre with a tube in (and ride it like that if you like but leave at least overnight) - that presses the tape down nicely for a good seal and also slightly stretches/eases the tyre and bead
... so you'll prob find it easier to seat them when you take out the tubes (and, yeah, a bit of diluted fairy liquid (or maybe a bit of sealant) helps the bead to slip into place on inflating)
Frozenwhite,
I see your "newish" to mtb's from your posts? Which we all are at some point!
Have you watched all the vids on YouTube about the basics? Applying tape, seating the bead with soapy water blah blah?
Some rims and tyres are just little s**** to do. What tyres are they mate? What rim again?
Post up where you live, there's likely to be a fellow stw'er nearby that could offer some help? Or the use of one of the many tubeless inflater pumps/ bridges.
I still use a coke bottle wrapped in duct tape and a lax attitude to health and safety as my tyre inflater. 😊
And what scaredypants says. 👍
Cheers guys. Have tried a few things from YouTube but my biggest issue is my floor pump is Schrader only so can't attach it to the tubeless valve with the inner core out. I have an adaptor to use it with normal valves. I've got the tubes back in now. I'm heading down to Drumlanrig castle 1st thing in morning so had to get it sorted tonight. My concern was I would have to redo the rim tape but seems it will be ok to just remove the tubes and retry to sit the best again? I'm in Hamilton in Scotland. May need to go to a shop and ask them to do it with a decent compressor? Cheers for all the advice
Oh and it's WTB ST i25 rims and WTB Vigilante on front and WTB BEE LINE on rear. All TCS so thought it would have been pretty straight forward
What's the "tyre lever method"?
Ok, I've not run WTB TCS so not sure if they have a reputation as being stubborn? Whether the TCS moniker is an indicator I don't know, people on here well though!
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">The Maxxis I use tend to seat really easy, no help to you though.</span>
The tape is fine as long as you don't damage it with the tyre levers and such, or when removing the tubeless valve.
With the issue you have with the pump, that might be all the problem there is. A CO2 canister and valve adapter can be another quick fix. Handy to have around anyway and not expensive unless you use it a lot. The massive boost of air is like attaching a small air compressor for a second or so.
If a a shop fits them for you, don't forget you might want them to put sealant in too. Medium term though, you want to make sure you can fit your own tubeless in the future as, as you have learned, it's a real ball ache when you can't. Most of us have been there though!
the ratchet strap round the tyre worked for me for my fatbike wheels
Service station or somewhere with a compressor.
If they're the ones i'm thinking of, they aren't the best for your first go. The walls of the tyres are so floppy that they won't hold their shape and hold any air to create a seal against the rim to start the seating process. I'd suggest you take them to somebody with a bit of experience, we do quite a lot of tubeless conversions, most of which are fairly quick and easy, but this one took us about 20mins of most of the above suggestions.
Oh and it’s WTB ST i25 rims and WTB Vigilante on front and WTB BEE LINE on rear. All TCS so thought it would have been pretty straight forward
I25s came with my t130 and have been great at going up, along with a Vigilante, just needed an Airshot not a track pump.
my floor pump is Schrader only
really? You sure you can't take the head apart and put the innards back the other way around ?
What’s the “tyre lever method”?
you get the tyre onto the rim and then use a tyre lever to pull the bead out to the edge of the rim and seat it where it should be for the majority of the circumference (both sides - you might even get one side fully on). This stops all the air rushing out when you try to inflate and makes them"catch" a lot easier
The walls of the tyres are so floppy that they won’t hold their shape and hold any air to create a seal against the rim to start the seating process.
Yeah it just didn't seem to be holding any air at all
just needed an Airshot not a track pump.
Was reading about them last night wishing I had one
really? You sure you can’t take the head apart and put the innards back the other way around ?
Yeah it was an Aldi job. I noticed the newer version does both
Does anyone know anywhere in Glasgow who would do the conversion for me? I'll eventually buy an airshot
The walls of the tyres are so floppy that they won’t hold their shape and hold any air to create a seal against the rim to start the seating process.
I had a pair like this and couldn't get them to inflate even with a booster cylinder. In the end I pumped them up with a tube (they seated easily) then deflated the tube, broke the bead seal on one side only (leaving the other fully seated) and removed the tube. They still wouldn't inflate but I found that if I tried the tyre lever trick (running a tyre lever horizontally under the free bead to pull it up onto the bead bed) they would finally inflate using the booster cylinder.
It was a faff but worth it in the end.
This does assume though that the tape and value are airtight (hard to be sure if you can't get the tyre to inflate).
(edit: wot the honourable member ^ above, said)
try the tyre lever thing first:
Get the tyre loosely on the wheel
put some watered-down "fairy" liquid on the rim or the tyre bead - helps lubricate the seating of the bead but also reduces air leakage under the beads a little bit I think
Then push one side of the tire as far onto the rim as you can, with bead pretty much seated. (fingers'll do or a blunt-faced tyre lever towards the end if you want). You probably won't get it fully on
For the second bead, you have to "pull" the bead outwards onto the seat area of the rim, and you do this by hooking a tyre lever under it as though you were going to take it right off, but instead just pull it towards the edge. Move around the wheel doing that until that side's also mostly seated
When it's there, you could also put a strap or smaller diameter inner tube (tie a knot in one if needed) around the partly seated tyre to hold it onto the rim
Then go for broke with your pump!
FW, where are you? I'm sure one of us would have a try at helping.
Edit. Just seen it's Glasgow.
I bet you'd get charged nearly as much in a shop as the purchase price of an airshot.
Possibly of interest...
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-ghetto-tubeless-content/
I’ll eventually buy an airshot
Just get one now, no point in having tyres you can’t pump up yourself
Buy a compressor. Worth it in the long run.
^ zigzag's link, valve cores out just like the guy in the vid. IME wtb tyres on wtb rims are a tight fit, so you may need to get them up to a high pressure to really get them to pop on, but getting them close enough to get sealant in there should be ok.
When I first tried, I was pumping the tyre with a track pump with the Tyre just restin on the floor up against a wall, the valve at the bottom. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't even start to go up.
I turned the wheel round so the valve was at the top, tried again and hey presto, tyre inflated immediately.
Pretty basic stuff I guess, but thankfully realised this before buying something I didn't need!
In no particular order, if I was buying now I’d investigate the Milkit bottle kit before buying the Airshot. All the inflation goodness but far more useful overall.
WTB TCS - yes, this is the Tubeless Compatible System, but refers mainly to the square UST bead on the tyre I think. WTB ‘tough’ tyres go up for me on TCS rims with a track pump and no frantic pumping. They just inflate exactly the way you want them to. They’re heavier but much better protected from cut sidewalls etc
Floppy tyres, yep if you’ve got the ‘light’ ones they can be a but formless - lots of soap on bead and rim and put the wheel horizontal over a bucket to keep weight off the bead while you hit it with as much air, as fast as possible. It can be worth pressing down hard over the valve so the tyre is squashed at that point if you’re struggling. It really helps although sounds daft.
The litre or so you can fit in an Airshot at 100-120psi is plenty if the valve core is out. A coke bottle and a couple of bits of screenwash tube plus a couple of valves cut out of old tubes will do the job just as well but isn’t as neat/portable. Safety issues with the bottle are overblown. Has to be a pop bottle, (water bottles not pressure rates and will burst unpredictably). Tape is a very poor idea and any sign of crease, dent or other damage and the bottle is scrap as it may burst. Undamaged bottles will not burst. Tape will only hide damage and create danger. It won’t allow usefully higher pressures - the tube onto the valve will blow off before you exceed the pressure the bottle will cope with. Don’t use mole grips etc on the pipe to restrict flow as if the pipe blows off they may cause injury.
Annoying facial hair and voice - check.
wonky eyes- check.
using a cheep pressure sprayer from b&q (other diy stores are available) - check.
If you stick a tube in to get the beads to engage, then after releasing one side to remove the tube and re-fitting it, put the wheel horizontally on top of a bucket (loose bead down) when inflating it. Gravity will hold the bead to the rim and stop the air leaking out.
Managed to get the tyres seated. I have done this without sealant so plan to inject sealant through the valves. There appears to be some air escaping between the tyre and rim slightly. Is this normal without sealant and should the sealant sort this out when it's in? The guy who helped me had never done it without sealant before so said he wasn't sure if that's just what happens
Yeah probably. Just make sure the bead is seated all the way - there's a little line running above the bead, you should be able to see this all the way round. Sometimes a bit of it hasnt popped out quite right. But yes, the sealant is required to seal the bead I'd say.
My son's wheels (self-built Superstar Carbon XC) absolutely refused to inflate and I tried everything, including a compressor. In the end, what got it going was to leave a tube inflated in the tyre for a few hours, then very carefully lever one bead out and remove the tube before replacing the bead and reinflating. That finally got it to inflate...
...but it still leaked like an absolute sieve round the bead. They were also incredibly easy to burp so at this point I accepted defeat and put in some super-lightweight tubes instead. And they're still there 9 months on with no punctures to show for it (yey to be only 25kg!) so I think it was a good call. Frankly, tubeless is good if it's genuinely low maintenance, but if it's more faff than tubes, then I'm not going to persevere for the sake of it.
These wheels remain my only tubeless defeat in several years of conversions.
Yeah probably. Just make sure the bead is seated all the way – there’s a little line running above the bead, you should be able to see this all the way round. Sometimes a bit of it hasnt popped out quite right. But yes, the sealant is required to seal the bead I’d say.
Yeah the line looks pretty even all the way round. Hopefully thats what the problem is then. Cheers
If the tyre seems floppy on the rim, a extra layer of tape helps.
Do you reckon that cheap tubeless hack would work with a 2l sprayer?