Mounting tires on a set of Flashpoint 40s last night and they are, without a doubt, the hardest rims I’ve ever mounted a tire on - and I spent most of the 90s working in a bike shop! Started with Michelin Pro Race, could not get them on without tearing skin off my finger and using a lever. Took that tire off, which required 2 tire levers, tried a thinner rim strip and still could barely get them on. Then tried a set of Conti GP4000s and they were perhaps even worse. - pinched 2 tubes using levers to mount, never need to use levers on any wheels before. What gives? Worried as my fiance will be riding this bike and there is absolutely no way she will ever get that tire off and of if she flats, will have to remember her phone and cab fare.
Anyone else had this problem? Suggest a tire that might fit?
Vitties - usually have a more supple feel and are easier to get on and off after they have been used for a while. I have the FP60’s and use Conti4000 to train. Yes,at first they were difficult to mount but once they had some miles on them they became much easier. Vredestein makes tires simolar to Vittie and are a little easier to get on and off as well.
I’m riding a set of Neuvations for training right now, same problem. I FOUGHT to get some vredesteins on them, punctured a tube doing it. The 2 things that really seemed to help were:
Packing tape as rim strips- about as thin as you can get
put the tires in the dryer for 6 or so minutes, on high. I though this was bunk when I heard it, but it worked!
You will definitely want to use the thinnest possible rim strip, I recommend the zipp, rox, or ritchey cloth strips of the michelin or vittoria plastic strips as they are less than half the thickness of velox. A thinner rimstrip is almost always the answer. We do run our rims at the high end of the size limit set out by the ISO, they have a +/-1mm tolerance on diameter and we can produce rims at +/-0.4mm diameter, so we operate in the top 0.8mm of the spec to ensure the tires will not blow off the rim even under extreme heat or high inflation pressures, some tire manuractureres like continental tend to make their tires at the low end of the spec for the same reasons, but the real culprit in hard to fit tires is generally a too-thick rim strip as even a high limit rim with low limit tire can be fitted together as long as the rim strip is very thin.