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2 weeks ago I finally got around to having time to set up the new crankbrothers synthesis wheelset from vital fantasy (still so stoked thank you vital and crankbrothers).
Pulled the tires and tannus tubeless off my oem set (which I can mount by hand without Tyre levers).
Try to install them on the new set. 29r front goes on easy by hand.
27.5 rear is unbelievably tight to get the last little bit and needs levers to get on. Won’t hold air longer than 20min. Spray it with soapy water and it blows bubbles around the valve stem and nearby spokes. I had put a hole in the tape with the lever.
Remove everything, re-do the tape, reinstall trying to be very cautious of the levers on the tape. Still touch it with the lever. Same again.
Remove everything for another re-tape. Run out of tape at about at about 3/4’s around the rim.
Think f*** it I’m 2 days in already and have to buy a new roll of tape I’ll just pay someone to do it. Drop it to the local bike franchise and explain to them Its very tight and I keep nicking the tape with my Tyre levers so it will need new tape and a lever with a nice short end on it. Head in to pick up the next day and it’s flat. He says he refreshed the sealant. I tell him I already know the issue is damaged tape, that’s what I had dropped it in for. Looks at me like I’m an idiot. Walk out with a still flat Tyre. On the way home realize I had forgot about another local bike mechanic I used to regularly go to had re-opened a new workshop after closing down a few years ago. Head in to buy more tape. He has no 30mm tape left and it takes 3 days to come in. Decide to leave it in there and let them do the install. Explain it’s super tight on the rim and I keep catching the tape with the lever. The wife to pick it up for me when it’s ready Friday afternoon. I grab it out of the car Saturday morning. It’s flat.
Pump it up and spray soapy water in it. Blows bubbles out some of the spokes, but also seems to blow bubbles through the Tyre sidewall. Decide I’ll install the brand new spare Tyre I have in the shed.
Pull it apart and go buy another roll of tape, a new bottle of sealant, and some new Tyre levers with a very short hook end.
This Tyre is even tighter than the original so I decide F*** it and abandon the tannus insert. I wrestle this thing for a good 20 mins before I get a second set of hands to help and it finally goes on. Pump it up, and spray it. Bubbles at the valve hole and spokes.
This Tyre is so tight it takes 10 mins just to get it to drop in the rim bed and get a lever under it. Pull it off and can’t find a hole but it looks like I overcut the valve hole in the tape a tiny bit.
Now 1.5 weeks in I retape it. Add some gorilla tape over the top in the area I’m using levers to try and protect it, and have another 20 min wrestle to get the new Tyre back on. Well I catch the tape with a lever again about 5mm past where I had stopped the gorilla tape.
Pull it all off and by now I’ve redone it and wiped sealant out so many times that there’s a bit of lint from the rags stuck to the leftover tape residue. Decide this might be allowing air through out so get some goo remover and tidy it all up.
Retape it, add a bit more gorilla this time. Wrestle the new Tyre on again. Blows loads of bubbles at the valve stem hole. peel the Tyre back enough to see I’ve ever so slightly overcut the tape hole again. Add a patch of gorilla and while doing notice the edges of the tape aren’t sticking to the rim now.
Pull it all off. Try to re-tape but it just won’t stick at all. There must still be a bit of residual goo remover. Give it another good clean with water and dish soap. Retape it but it’s still not sticking very well. Give it another scrub and leave it to dry overnight.
Running low on tape again as well as patience. It still isn’t sticking very well.
Decide f*** it I’m just using straight gorilla and going back to the original Tyre with the insert as the new one is just impossibly tight.
Get it mounted, spray it and it blows bubbles at some spokes but it’s the best it’s been out of any attempts. Decide I’ll keep adding air and spinning it every hour or two and hopefully sealant will work. Well it takes about 12 hours to go flat! Huge win I should be fine get through a 2 hour ride so I’m happy and hopefully over time sealant will plug whatever hole there is.
Throw the wheel on the bike and the Tyre is on BACKWARDS!!!!!! FML!!!!
It’s now been 2 weeks, about 10 attempts, and about $200 in parts and cleaning gear and I still have a Tyre the goes flat and is f mounted the wrong way.
I felt this story in the marrow of my bones. I haven’t had your exact experience on the same wheel, but every part of your story I have experienced on one day or another.
In a related story, last month I finally decided that I will never ever buy the small roll of tubeless tape or small bottle of sealant ever again. If I change rim size and have 30 meters of extra 30mm tape sitting around, so be it. Cannot afford the existential pain of having 6” too little rim tape ever again.
I have broken my finger, elbow and collarbone at various stages of the last 15 years, most recent big crash was a worrying concussion. I never for a split second considered stopping biking.
I can vividly recall my exact state of being at 3 separate times when I could not get a tubeless tyre to hold after hours of faffing about, I came so close to just dumping all my gear in the bin and taking up knitting or any other sensible hobby.
I had a wheel that had a broken nipple inside the rim for 6 months that I refused to remove as the tape job had been so harrowing.
I had a buddy in college with a fixie that he had the chainring on the left side, just because he could. haha
Fun one recently building up my frameworks enduro. Got the trp dhr evos on and went to bleed them. Front brake no problems. Back brake i went to loosen the bleed port on the caliper. Tiny torq bolt and it wouldnt budge. Kept trying and snapped a park tool torq off in the bleed port screw. After about a half hour of trying to get it out i finally took it to a local shop. They were able to get a tiny drill bit into the snapped off tool head and remove it. Somehow got the bleed port bolt out as well and were able to bleed it. They said whoever got it in there must have really put their weight into it. They struggled with it for a while.
Been here! Chased a creak on my old Sentinel. Practically tore it completely down to the ground and back up and it still creaked, turned out to be a combo of loose and dirty saddle rails, anytime my bike creaks I start by checking them saddle bolts...
OMG this took me too my emotionally hijacked self. I've been with my wife for over 20 years at this point (I swear I'm not that old, we just met young) and I've thrown a full blown temper tantrum meltdown 3-4 times in that time period.
The biggest one was a similar story getting ready for a CES event at mammoth and trying to get the car loaded to head up there after a long day at work. I fought a tire and insert for 2 hours, also putting a hole in the tape, taking it all apart and starting over. I got it all back together and holding air, only to realize that I put the tire on backwards. I said screw the insert, pulled it apart and remounted it. My wife, just trying to make small talk to calm me down, said, "but don't you need those inserts to stop you from breaking your rear wheel?"
Smash cut to practice day, I blew that rear wheel up and then had to rent a dh bike from the mountain to harvest the rear wheel from it. And that's the story, of how I raced a CES event with a dork disk.
This might not be your problem looking at your location, but one of the best things I found for applying rim tape is warming up the surface. Make sure the rim is super clean with some acetone on a rag (or IPA), then let it dry and warm up with a hair dryer or heat gun (careful with a heat a gun on carbon obviously...) This normally makes the adhesive stick way stronger than if it goes on cold. It might vary between brands but I found it only needed to be below 16ish Celsius to be an issue, which is tough in an NZ winter. Above that you should be fine, but certain tapes and rims might need slightly warmer application to work best, but it should hold pretty strong if you do
I feel this in the, uh, feels.
I have several wheels that I'm in the process of rebuilding right now and the existential dread that comes with the tubeless shuffle is like a dark cloud hanging my garage each time I finish a wheel.
Stock, Bontrager wheels. Wanted to put Maxxis DH meat on. I have recently crashed and have hand/wrist/arm weakness. So took it to the Trek dealer. They performed it right away. But didn't put in any sealant. That's when I knew I should've just went away.
Dude broke a tire lever right in front of me. To put in sealant. Like, you do know you can put in sealant thru the valve, right?
To me? It's like, you know you just can't do that on a DH tire? There is a technique. And he's like I've changed thousands of tires, even on the Tour De France. And I'm like, but that's not a DH casing tire now is it?
Anyways, Trek warrantied the wheel and reimbursed me for the Maxxis meat he destroyed. Cuz it didn't hold air anymore.
True story.
This feeling connects with me on an emotional level. For me it was a tubeless wheel from before I worked at a bike shop. I used finish line fiber link sealant (just 1 bottle) and personally retaped it like 3x as well as letting my friend who already worked at the bike shop retape it and tell me it wouldn’t work. Ended up being that the sealant was too thick and I had too little so it wouldn’t fill all the holes. I let my neighbor put some Stan’s in it swearing up and down and it wouldn’t work and it fixed it. I wasn’t sure whether to punch him in the mouth or get down in my knees and worship him.
I've put minions on my bontrager wheels that came on my remedy and it was the tightest fitting tire I've ever done. It was a real pain in the ass.
Some years ago, I got a new rear tire, a 27.5 Maxxis of some sort, and got to work. I've done enough tires I don't really think when doing it. This was the tightest tire ever. I was not even close. I put it in the sun, grabbed my steel tire irons, and worked it a bit before I damaged it. I finally took a second and looked at the tire; it was a 26. Huh, I grab the box it came in out of the trash, and it says 27.5. It was a new, unopened box. Easy fix after that. Not as brutal as the above story, but I still laugh at myself for spending so long when it was not even close.
My friends love to remind me about a similar experience where I spent probably 5 hours and multiple rolls of various rim tapes trying to seal a tubeless tire in the Mountain Creek parking lot on Sat night after practice. Damn thing kept leaking around the tape and through the rim. Had to hit the local HW store for IPA, rags and gorilla tape. Wore out my already tired arms from seating DH bead s and swinging the rim around to dry it. Meanwhile the whole crew is sitting around me in lawn chairs drinking beers and heckling every move like some MTB med school operating theater in an outlaw bar.
I can't understate the necessity of cleaning, drying and warming the rim after a tape failure and sealant contamination. Repeated failed attempts will just continually degrade the tape adhesion. My method is to shake out any sealant in the rim, wipe the inner surface of excess sealant, a couple rounds of water damped rags to remove any residue. Then clean rag with wet with 90% IPA wipe down. Follow with a thorough heating/drying of the rim. Don't touch the rim surface after the drying. If a new drip of sealant or whatever comes out, dry the hell out of the area again. 100% of the surface must be prepped or you may have to start again...
Had a shop quote my wife $40/ .5hr shop rate to add sealant to her already existing-yet-def-old-n-dried sealant when she had a leak trying to get home from work. One wheel. Had her put the mech on the phone so I could try to begin to understand why. During the chat he also said they wouldn't be able to do it right away and she'd have to leave the bike. Busy season? Nope. December in the northern midwest. Had him hand me back to her and told her have em pump it up then get outta there, take her normal route and I'd meet her enroute to pick her up. Made a video of me doing the job in under 5 minutes after we got home, including a rather long head banging session. Needless, they don't get our business or recommendations to others.
My brother, may you find peace.
Yes, Acetone to clean up the goo and look up the rope trick on youtube to seat your tire.
Thank you everyone for the solidarity.
Update for today.
Attempt number I don’t know what anymore I’ve lost count.
The friction of rubber on gorilla tape is like it has glued itself the the bead of the Tyre and it takes me over an hour just to get the bead of the Tyre to move away from edge of the rim and drop into the rim bed. I’m so sweaty I look like I’ve just got out of a pool and my thumbs and forearms are no longer useable body parts. I work in concrete construction everyday and this is about as beat at my hands and forearms have been in months.
Takes another hour cleaning off the gorilla tape goop.
Decide to abandon the Stan’s 30mm and go buy some peaty’s 32mm because maybe it will have better adhesive and maybe the extra 2mm width will magically do something.
Install tape, get first side of the Tyre and insert on, work my way around exactly the same as every other time, starting opposite the valve and rolling the Tyre in to make sure the bead is down in the bed. Get around to the valve with the last 20cm to go as usual and the Tyre rolls on by hand this time 😲.
Ladies and gentlemen we are inflated, holding air, and the Tyre is facing the correct way!!!!!
I had a similar problem with Crankbrothers DH rims. Air coming out the spokes, several retapes, only to find it was the way the valve sat in the rim well. The head of the valve was too big, so the rubber seal wasn’t actually sealing on the rim.
Fitted a valve with a smaller diameter head and all was good.
Will you continue to fantasize?
Maybe GMBN needs to have a refresher course on how to set up your wheels. Tubeless or not. They both have their techniques and nuances. I vote for The Don to do it. Love that guy
When you forget which brand of sealant you had in a tyre and top it up with a different one...
THIS for sure. After hearing this sort of tip I have started dangling a small, old-school radiant fan heater from a beam above my workstand. A steady warm air stream onto the rim and the tape as I apply it makes so much difference! (I install the wheel in the bike to apply). The tape shapes itself so much better into the rim channel as you go. Easier to apply, minimal air gets caught under, and any little bubbles are easier to squeegee out of the softer tape.
they invented central heating for that...
Last two places I have lived haven’t had central heating. #justpoorpeoplethings #mountainliving
Dang, I forgot you can just.......not be poor....
Never had too much trouble getting tires on rims but the old aluminum E13 rims have a rim bed that slopes up before going back down to the middle of the rim and ended up clamping the tire in a vice and yanking on the wheel to unseat the bead. In a similar bout of frustration and sore fingers I ended up cutting a tire off my old gravel bike.
As I get older, I'm trying to do stuff the "right" way instead of just making it up as I go. One of my main issues is that I'm a chronic over-tightener. It turns out that my hands are not calibrated to the torque spec. So I got a fancy torque wrench for working on my bike.
The other day, it came time to replace my threaded bottom bracket. I was stoked because this was a chance to do stuff right! I can justify my purchase and utilize my new, flashy tool. I get the old BB out, clean out the shell, grease stuff up real nice, and start threading the new one in. I got stuff hand tight, and it comes time to use the fancy torque wrench. Turns out that my new tool is a 1/4 inch drive, and the BB tool uses a 3/8 inch drive. That's fine, I'll use my shitty, less cool-looking torque wrench that I use on my car. I start with the drive side cup, set my wrench to 50nm, and start tightening. My first thought is, "man, I'm so glad I'm doing this the right way. 50nm is A LOT, there is no way I'd know what that is." I keep tightening. Mind you, to do this part of the install, I have my bike flipped upside down. I knew the 50nm was a bit of force, and I didn't want to put that through my dropper. By now, I'm putting body weight on this torque wrench, and it hasn't clicked yet. There was a second thought forming somewhere in my brain, but it hadn't materialized.
At this point, I'm flummoxed. I'd used a torque wrench that I have used before, which I knew worked. Why was it not clicking? Dejected, I moved onto the other side. I set the torque wrench back to its normal direction, and in a few turns it clicked, letting me know that it was at 50nm. That is when it hit me. Assumptions are like assholes. My nice new torque wrench will read torque in either direction. My old torque wrench, while having the ability to change directions, doesn't actually take readings when winding to the left. So, how tight was my drive side bottom bracket? Well, I don't know, but needless to say, I had to use my BIG cheater bar to back it off.
This is my big cheater bar. It's my old dirt jump handlebars. How do you spell professional? IDK.
How many times I have looked for cheater bar and not considered my old alloy bars?!?
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