First Tubeless Tire Setup

Triathlon Forum
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Going along with my previous first brake bleed post, I am adding a first tubeless tire setup post.

For background, I bought a new road bike last year with no research or prior experience with disc brakes and tubeless. I am an expert bike mechanic with most of the tools to do almost everything, but I added a few more for these projects.

My bike came fully set up, but I wanted to change the tires to 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pro based on a lot of feedback on this and other sites. So after a year of riding, I decided to pull the trigger during my pre-season maintenance.

Overall, it went a lot easier than I expected. I did screw a couple things up and wish I had a different sealant injector, but all was easily corrected. Here are a few of my thoughts and learnings…

  1. Getting the old tires off was a little challenging. If it matters, I have hookless ENVE 3.4 wheels, and one bead would not break free from its shelf into the center channel. I had to fight it. After that, it was a snap.
  2. Getting the new tires back on was also much easier than I expected. No different from tube tires.
  3. A compressor is a must-have for seating the tires. I tried a pump multiple times and was close, but they needed the blast. And, I did not want to waste a CO2. I used my compressor’s standard Schrader chuck on the stem with core removed. Pop-pop-pop, and it was seated.
  4. Accurately measure the sealant. My first screw-up was using Muck-off in a pouch. I could not tell how much I was putting front and back. In retrospect, I don’t think I squirted in near enough. My back tire was leaking, so I decided to re-do it.
  5. I picked injectable sealant for a several reasons…
    1. I rarely get flats, so I was not concerned about superior sealing abilities of non-injectable sealants like Silca
    2. It looked like I would make a colossal mess trying to mount a tire after pouring a 60ml in the bottom of a road tire
    3. I wanted to be able to top-off periodically without removing the tire
    4. Stan’s regular seemed highly regarded and also injectable
  6. For my re-do of the leaking tire, I bought a Park TSI-1 injector, which I do not recommend. You cannot clamp the hose which makes filling the injector difficult. I will probably replace it with something like a Stan’s or Silca injector with a hose clamp.
  7. I replaced my valve cores, thought I don’t think that was necessary.
  8. Don’t forget to clean the wheels during and after. It is still messy.
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How is the ride with 60ml of sealant? I’ve been tubeless for a a while and have never gone over 30ml with my 28mm tires on my road bike. I ride on rough Texas chip seal. I go with 45ml in my 42mm tires on my gravel bike. Maybe I am putting too little sealant in? I do go with 60ml in my 2.4/2.35 MTB tires, though. Also, I went from using a compressor to the Airshot for seating tires and it works great.

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Today was supposed to be my shakeout ride, but I got rained out. I followed the table for Stan’s, which calls for 50ml for 28mm tires and 55ml for 32mm tires. I rounded up to 60 since it was my first effort.

And I like the idea of that Airshot. I may get one for the next time I do a tire. Though, getting out my little pancake compressor is not too much a hassle.

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The best tool for injecting sealant is a 2oz Stan’s bottle. Take your valve core out and squeeze it in the stem. One bottle full for road tires and two for MTB.

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You don’t notice it at all. The sealant weight is negligible compared to the system weight. Biggest difference i guess is just that punctures will seal way better with more sealant

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Just a thought. If you know anybody in medical, ask them to save a few saline flush syringes. The nozzles fit in a Presta valve stem with the core removed just right and they are graduated so it’s easy to measure out how much you’re injecting.

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For a first time install I’ll add at least 30ml to for the initial coating/soaking of the casing, so 60ish total. Soap spray on the tire to ease the pop.

Minimum 30ml for top offs. I had to use 250ml of Vegetalex on my 76mm wide mini-fat bike. First 120ml soaked immediately into the casing :smiling_face_with_tear:

Any way, it’s worth rechecking after the first ride how much usable sealant is left until one becomes familiar with their brand (the pool that forms!).

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In the future, Silca has fixed that issue. I’ve been a happy Orange Endurance user, but might make the switch when my giant bottle finally goes empty.

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Dang, I missed that. Somehow I got caught up in all the prior noise and did not see the latest product is injectable. Now I want to replace all my stuff with Silca.

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Brilliant! My daughter is a nurse, and I just told her about this idea. I shall have a few flush syringes to test with. She said the saline flush syringes are only 10ml, but they also have 60ml syringes for other uses.

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I use the 10ml syringes myself. It’s what I have left over from when I worked in the hospital. Besides, I’m only running a 25c tire, so even for an initial mount, it’s only a couple syringes each.

The one thing I will say is the nozzle is a snug fit so there’s no room for air to escape as the sealant goes in. I just compress the tire before putting the nozzle in and release the tire as I’m injecting. Works well.

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