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Sorry I know this has been asked a ton of times here, but I'm stuck when ordering the right tape width for my wheels!
The rims are WTB ST i29 tubeless compatible, so 29mm wide. I have heard two ideas with tubeless ready rims and the tape width needed.
One is that the spoke holes is all that need to be covered for a good seal and the second is that the tape should be 5mm wider than the rim width.
I was looking at getting Stans or some Tesa tape from eBay. Whats going to work well?
Cheers
T
What do WTB recommend? I'd be going with 32-35mm tape on those. IIRC you can buy a 11 metre roll for about £8.
I’ve had good luck with the 35mm WTB tape on 29mm Stan’s Flow rims.
Also, I know the DT Swiss tape is 32mm wide for their 30mm rims. And 27 tape on their 25mm rims.
WTB recommend inner diameter plus 5mm for their rims and bother to sell a suitable range of tapes. It would be cheaper for them to just sell 20mm to cover the spoke holes if that’s all they thought you needed.
Simply covering the holes will get you set up in most cases but the manufacturers will have done a lot of testing and will also be wary of potential lawsuits. Different manufacturers recommend different amounts of tape, but as their rims are not exactly the same as others, that’s reasonable IMO. Personally, I tend to stick to manufacturer recommendations for tape width and let their testers do the hard work...
On One/PX have a reasonable range of well priced tubeless tape widths ... 😁
Just covering the spoke holes works fine but you have a greater risk of damaging the tape when putting the tyre on and off. Just have to be a bit more careful..
Tesa 4289 tape on eBay - identical to Stans except you get 66metres for 12 quid rather that 4m. Unless you have a really tight tyre, go wider as you won't damage the tape trying to get the tyre off.