Continental 5000 tubeless on HED Jet Plus rims - What am I doing wrong?

Triathlon Forum
1

Since I got the fromt tire on both beads sit at the bottom of the wheel centre. At the valve one side is lifted slightly by the valve flange. It can’t be seated with a standard floor pump even with the core removed.

Switching to CO2 I managed to seat the tire with core removed but when I removed the CO2 it popped again and unseated itself. Moving on to CO2 with valve core attached I get the tire to seat properly and it seems to hold pressure, there is a slight leak around the valve, maybe I should replace the tubeless rim tape. The leak is so small The pressure loss is very slow. At this point I can attach the track pump and inflate the tire more. I went up to just below 80 psi witch is the rated maximum pressure according to your homepage.

When letting the pressure out by pressing the valve the tire suddenly popped and the bead was u seated again.

Summar of process

  1. Mount valve - OK
  2. Get one side of tire on - OK
  3. Get other side of tire on - OK
  4. Inflate to seat bead - OK
  5. Let air out - OK
  6. Tore seated withput air - FAIL
  7. Remove core
  8. Add sealant
  9. Replace core
  10. Shake and lay flat and flip
  11. Inflate

This is how tight the tire is:

I managed to get the front tire on by inserting a tire leaver on each end and moving them 1mm at a time. I don’t know how to get them of to fit a standard tire now.

Where am I going wrong? I really want to go tubeless but should I sell these and get a pair of Schwalbe Pro One? When looking at online videos some fit the 5000 TL with out leavers.

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2

Get a crankbrother speedier lever. It will be super easy to get the tire on.

Jeroen

3

You might want to invest in the following $10 Kool Stop Tire Bead Jack. Makes mounting on HED JETs much easier.

4

Ah the joys of tubeless. Good luck fixing a flat in the field…

There are some tricks. The tire jack Thomas suggests is a good help for actually getting the tire on (though the main thing is good technique - put both beads in the center channel and stretch the tire down toward the valve). Schwalbe ones won’t help as they are also typically a very tight fit so your experience will be similar. Here’s the trick: before you inflate the tire, put some soapy water around the edge on both sides. Then inflate. You can feel free to go above the 80psi to get the bead to seat - the rim can easily take 120psi or more even. That low limit is primarily there for safety, because with tubeless tires on wide rims there’s a high risk of blowing the tire off the rim (more joys of tubeless!). Anyway, once the bead fully seats so it is locked in, when you lower the pressure it will stay seated - it won’t bulge like you are seeing now. Then you’re good…until you get a flat, at which point you’re screwed, both because you might not be able to get the tire off and because if you can’t seat it easily at home you’ll never seat it in the field.

5

Ah the joys of tubeless. Good luck fixing a flat in the field…

There are some tricks. The tire jack Thomas suggests is a good help for actually getting the tire on (though the main thing is good technique - put both beads in the center channel and stretch the tire down toward the valve). Schwalbe ones won’t help as they are also typically a very tight fit so your experience will be similar. Here’s the trick: before you inflate the tire, put some soapy water around the edge on both sides. Then inflate. You can feel free to go above the 80psi to get the bead to seat - the rim can easily take 120psi or more even. That low limit is primarily there for safety, because with tubeless tires on wide rims there’s a high risk of blowing the tire off the rim (more joys of tubeless!). Anyway, once the bead fully seats so it is locked in, when you lower the pressure it will stay seated - it won’t bulge like you are seeing now. Then you’re good…until you get a flat, at which point you’re screwed, both because you might not be able to get the tire off and because if you can’t seat it easily at home you’ll never seat it in the field.

This is utter nonsense, like much of the anti-tubeless BS

  1. Get a bead jack to get the tire on. It will be work but you won’t break the rim.
  2. The tires will stretch. I had a BEAR of a time mounting my GP5Ks on ENVEs initially. Zipp TL went on my NSWs without tools. But either way, the Contis will stretch. Next time you need to mount them, you might be able to do it without tools if you have strong hands.
  3. Get a patch kit, like DynaPlug. If you flat in the field, you just jam the little plug in there, reinflate, and will be on your way. You don’t even have to take the wheel off. Much faster than changing a tube. If you have a puncture so large the plug won’t fix it, you’re likely in bad shape even if you had a tube (sidewalk blowout, etc).
6

Ah the joys of tubeless. Good luck fixing a flat in the field…

There are some tricks. The tire jack Thomas suggests is a good help for actually getting the tire on (though the main thing is good technique - put both beads in the center channel and stretch the tire down toward the valve). Schwalbe ones won’t help as they are also typically a very tight fit so your experience will be similar. Here’s the trick: before you inflate the tire, put some soapy water around the edge on both sides. Then inflate. You can feel free to go above the 80psi to get the bead to seat - the rim can easily take 120psi or more even. That low limit is primarily there for safety, because with tubeless tires on wide rims there’s a high risk of blowing the tire off the rim (more joys of tubeless!). Anyway, once the bead fully seats so it is locked in, when you lower the pressure it will stay seated - it won’t bulge like you are seeing now. Then you’re good…until you get a flat, at which point you’re screwed, both because you might not be able to get the tire off and because if you can’t seat it easily at home you’ll never seat it in the field.

This is utter nonsense, like much of the anti-tubeless BS

  1. Get a bead jack to get the tire on. It will be work but you won’t break the rim.
  2. The tires will stretch. I had a BEAR of a time mounting my GP5Ks on ENVEs initially. Zipp TL went on my NSWs without tools. But either way, the Contis will stretch. Next time you need to mount them, you might be able to do it without tools if you have strong hands.
  3. Get a patch kit, like DynaPlug. If you flat in the field, you just jam the little plug in there, reinflate, and will be on your way. You don’t even have to take the wheel off. Much faster than changing a tube. If you have a puncture so large the plug won’t fix it, you’re likely in bad shape even if you had a tube (sidewalk blowout, etc).
    Well I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Responses like this one are a big reason I often don’t bother posting here - totally unhelpful to the original poster, mostly wrong, and massively dickish at the same time.

Everything I wrote is correct, written by someone who has decades of experience riding and testing all types of tires, including tubeless. I even ride tubeless in certain circumstances where I think it’s the best option. That said, there are some real drawbacks and he is experiencing some of them right now. Let me explain…

(1) the bead jack gets the tire on but it doesn’t seat the bead. He got the tire on but can’t seat the bead. If you had actually bothered to read his post before spewing your unhelpful drivel (and if you aren’t as big an idiot as your post implies), you would have known that.

(2) The tires may stretch a bit over time, yes, but that doesn’t help him right now, does it? Also, neither of us is sure yet how much the 5000TLs stretch, because they are very new and so our experience with them is limited. And even if they do stretch eventually, he still might not be able to get them off/on and reseat the bead in the field, on those particular rims. And that sucks.

(3) The dynaplugs are great, when they work. As you pointed out, they won’t always work, such as if you get a sidewall cut, a super common type of flat. A sidewall cut is very easy to fix with a boot and a tube, provided you can easily remove and reseat the tire - fixed one yesterday in 5 minutes. (Again, the fact that you imply otherwise reveals a total lack of knowledge/experience.) If you can’t remove and reinstall the tire in the field you’re screwed, and if you can’t reseat it, you’re going to be thumping your way home (particularly bad in a race situation).

Of course, all of this is irrelevant to the original poster, who was merely interested in how to seat the beads, which I instructed him how to do in my post.

7

Ah the joys of tubeless. Good luck fixing a flat in the field…

There are some tricks. The tire jack Thomas suggests is a good help for actually getting the tire on (though the main thing is good technique - put both beads in the center channel and stretch the tire down toward the valve). Schwalbe ones won’t help as they are also typically a very tight fit so your experience will be similar. Here’s the trick: before you inflate the tire, put some soapy water around the edge on both sides. Then inflate. You can feel free to go above the 80psi to get the bead to seat - the rim can easily take 120psi or more even. That low limit is primarily there for safety, because with tubeless tires on wide rims there’s a high risk of blowing the tire off the rim (more joys of tubeless!). Anyway, once the bead fully seats so it is locked in, when you lower the pressure it will stay seated - it won’t bulge like you are seeing now. Then you’re good…until you get a flat, at which point you’re screwed, both because you might not be able to get the tire off and because if you can’t seat it easily at home you’ll never seat it in the field.

This is utter nonsense, like much of the anti-tubeless BS

  1. Get a bead jack to get the tire on. It will be work but you won’t break the rim.
  2. The tires will stretch. I had a BEAR of a time mounting my GP5Ks on ENVEs initially. Zipp TL went on my NSWs without tools. But either way, the Contis will stretch. Next time you need to mount them, you might be able to do it without tools if you have strong hands.
  3. Get a patch kit, like DynaPlug. If you flat in the field, you just jam the little plug in there, reinflate, and will be on your way. You don’t even have to take the wheel off. Much faster than changing a tube. If you have a puncture so large the plug won’t fix it, you’re likely in bad shape even if you had a tube (sidewalk blowout, etc).
    Well I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Responses like this one are a big reason I often don’t bother posting here - totally unhelpful to the original poster, mostly wrong, and massively dickish at the same time.

Everything I wrote is correct, written by someone who has decades of experience riding and testing all types of tires, including tubeless. I even ride tubeless in certain circumstances where I think it’s the best option. That said, there are some real drawbacks and he is experiencing some of them right now. Let me explain…

(1) the bead jack gets the tire on but it doesn’t seat the bead. He got the tire on but can’t seat the bead. If you had actually bothered to read his post before spewing your unhelpful drivel (and if you aren’t as big an idiot as your post implies), you would have known that.

(2) The tires may stretch a bit over time, yes, but that doesn’t help him right now, does it? Also, neither of us is sure yet how much the 5000TLs stretch, because they are very new and so our experience with them is limited. And even if they do stretch eventually, he still might not be able to get them off/on and reseat the bead in the field, on those particular rims. And that sucks.

(3) The dynaplugs are great, when they work. As you pointed out, they won’t always work, such as if you get a sidewall cut, a super common type of flat. A sidewall cut is very easy to fix with a boot and a tube, provided you can easily remove and reseat the tire - fixed one yesterday in 5 minutes. (Again, the fact that you imply otherwise reveals a total lack of knowledge/experience.) If you can’t remove and reinstall the tire in the field you’re screwed, and if you can’t reseat it, you’re going to be thumping your way home (particularly bad in a race situation).

Of course, all of this is irrelevant to the original poster, who was merely interested in how to seat the beads, which I instructed him how to do in my post.

It’s the “Big Tube” industry trying to keep tubeless down! They don’t want people to know the truth man!

In all seriousness, I’ve run road tubeless for years and never had any of the problems I hear people often lament about. I do find it funny how some people who run tubeless treat it like it’s a religion. If it was perfect for every situation, then everyone would use it!

8

My experience with Hed Plus rims is that you have to use a surprising amount of pressure to really get the tires to seat. It varies by tires but 100+ psi isn’t unusual until they really pop (you don’t always hear the final pop but once you know what the seated tire should look like you can see when its sitting correctly). It also isn’t unusual for a tire to get seated 95% of the way around at low pressure and then require a lot more pressure for the final 5%. I think this is just the way the beads are designed on the Plus rims. Once in place they should stay seated unless there is an issue with your particular tire.

I have also found the ease of tire fitting to be very tire specific. Some of the video’s online clearly use tires pre-selected to be easy to fit as they make it look far too easy. I use very stiff Pedro’s levers but have heard good things about the expensive Silca levers. One trick I have used previously is to heat the tires a bit in the drier.

9

Based on the picture, I think some technique might help. I have not seen any tire that fit so tight that you would need tire levers at the stage in the photo. I HAVE watched people try and put tires on without pinching the bead into the drop center, and they get to the point you show in your photo and can’t go any further. On a TL ready rim, you must keep the beads in the center, no matter what tire.
So - you’re at the point where the photo shows, what’s next? Put your lever in, and pry on the tire but with moderate force, and one hand. You’ll need your other hand free to work around circumference of the rim and squeeze that bead into the drop center. Keep the force applied at the tire lever, and the tool should lever the tire on as you make slack in the bead with the other hand. You might have to take a couple bites with the lever but this will work. The key is to keep the bead in tension so it stays in the middle where you put it. It will take practice. I do the same thing but generally (not always) without the levers - keep tension on that bead so it stays down in the middle. On especially tight tire/rim combos, start your pinch opposite the unseated part and work up one side then go opposite again and work up the other side. As long as you keep tension on the bead you will creep enough slack into it to get the final bit on.

10

Well I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Responses like this one are a big reason I often don’t bother posting here - totally unhelpful to the original poster, mostly wrong, and massively dickish at the same time.

Everything I wrote is correct, written by someone who has decades of experience riding and testing all types of tires, including tubeless. I even ride tubeless in certain circumstances where I think it’s the best option. That said, there are some real drawbacks and he is experiencing some of them right now. Let me explain…

(1) the bead jack gets the tire on but it doesn’t seat the bead. He got the tire on but can’t seat the bead. If you had actually bothered to read his post before spewing your unhelpful drivel (and if you aren’t as big an idiot as your post implies), you would have known that.

(2) The tires may stretch a bit over time, yes, but that doesn’t help him right now, does it? Also, neither of us is sure yet how much the 5000TLs stretch, because they are very new and so our experience with them is limited. And even if they do stretch eventually, he still might not be able to get them off/on and reseat the bead in the field, on those particular rims. And that sucks.

(3) The dynaplugs are great, when they work. As you pointed out, they won’t always work, such as if you get a sidewall cut, a super common type of flat. A sidewall cut is very easy to fix with a boot and a tube, provided you can easily remove and reseat the tire - fixed one yesterday in 5 minutes. (Again, the fact that you imply otherwise reveals a total lack of knowledge/experience.) If you can’t remove and reinstall the tire in the field you’re screwed, and if you can’t reseat it, you’re going to be thumping your way home (particularly bad in a race situation).

Of course, all of this is irrelevant to the original poster, who was merely interested in how to seat the beads, which I instructed him how to do in my post.

I don’t know dude… I mean, you can take the moral high ground if you want, but as someone who has been in OPs position before (cursing myself in the basement with a blistered thumbs, having just spent $200 hard earned bucks on new tires, the excitement and optimism of trying out this “new technology” nearly vanished), I found posts like your really discouraging. It’s sort of like kicking a dog when it’s down to sarcastically quip “good luck if you ever flat in the field.” I’m was hoping to give the OP some reassurance that the work will be worth the effort. I was nearly dissuaded from running tubeless by posts like your, and ultimately I’m glad I took the plunge. There is undoubtedly a learning curve, but I don’t think it’s any different than learning how to glue tubulars or even just learn how to change clincher tubes for the first time.

And in response to your specific points

  1. Yeah, I’m just an idiot. I probably have less experience than you, having only recently returned to triathlon 2 years ago after a 10 year hiatus from cycling. I’ve wasted no time trying out tons of different gear. I’m no bike shop mechanic, but during my 10 year hiatus I maintained my own GTS3 race car, which perhaps re-calibrated my “pain in the ass meter” to levels which most would find unacceptable?
  2. I don’t really see how concerns about seating the tire are relevant in the field if OP has to put a tube in. Wouldn’t the tube just seat the tire? The only time I’ve had issues seating the bead is when trying to set them up without a tube without a compressor.
11

Thank you for your input. I just read your thread regarding tubeless on Hed Jet wheels as well.

I will try using the Schwalbe levers that clip on to the rim that may helt with the getting tire on phase.

I use Hed tubeless valves (that I guess is Schwalbe valves). Since I have used the wheels a lot with tubes the tape is very stretched around the valve hole so I guess I should change the rim tape for new tape when going tubeless. I can’t find any info regarding width of the tape I should use with the Jet plus rim. I found that tubeless tape should be 2-4 mm wider than inner width so should I use a 25mm tape? And then just choose Stans notubes tape or Schwalbe tape?

12

You don’t need to change the rim tape.

13

One thing that might help with getting the tire on is to put an old tire and tube in before you install the tubeless valve. New rim tape might not be well seated in the channel yet and old tube and air pressure will compact the tape. It also allows you to check the tape one last time before you try to get the tire on and seated

14

I have now noticed that the rim tape is poorly mounted and sits where the bead should sit. In my front wheel I have Schwalbe 25mm tape. Is that correct width for the Hed Jet Plus? 21 inside width and 25 on the brake track? Or should I use 23?

15

Are you using TWO wraps of the supplied HED tape?

16

I bought the wheels used. The rear disc has a tape that looks like Stans Notubes tape. Probably wrapped twice. I haven’t tried to seat that one. I’ve only worked on my front Jet 6 plus that has blue Schwalbe 25mm tape, wrapped once. On one side I’ve seen the tape folding up on the side so I guess that’s why it won’t seat. The other side looks fine and the bead seats perfectly.

17

You may consider buying new tape, cleaning and installing 2 wraps of HED’s tape.

It also helps to install the tires with tubes for a day and let the tube set the adhesive on the tape. It all matters and I just did a 244 gravel mile race on HED wheels (Vanquish) this weekend and never lost a single PSI of air. Incredible.

18

https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Film-Strapping-Tape-8896/product-reviews/B00C0Z1Z5C
.

19

How wide is the Hed tape? Can’t find that data any where?

20

I bought the wheels used. The rear disc has a tape that looks like Stans Notubes tape. Probably wrapped twice. I haven’t tried to seat that one. I’ve only worked on my front Jet 6 plus that has blue Schwalbe 25mm tape, wrapped once. On one side I’ve seen the tape folding up on the side so I guess that’s why it won’t seat. The other side looks fine and the bead seats perfectly.

If you replace the rim tape, get it from Hed and eliminate a point of failure. Hed also has (or had) 2 types of rim tape. Beige requires 2 layers, but black only requires one. This info is available in Hed’s FAQs.

I have seen some tires have trouble seating near the valve. You might consider loosening the valve and using it in in a little until you get the tire on, then pull the valve back out and tighten it down.