I get that tubeless are all the rage, tires must be as wide as possible and pressure as low as possible.
It may be more blasphemous than slamming Lionel, I may be kicked out of TS for saying this, but I fuckin’ hate tubeless wheels.
(I used tubeless extensively with MTB, so no stranger. I do all my bike maintenance, so its not like I’ve never worked on a bike before)
I needed new wheels and tubeless are the only thing you can practically get. I didn’t have anything against it, its just that I’m on the trainer for all my rides except for a few pre-race and race rides, so silly to deal with dried sealant and such. “No problem,” I figured, “I’ll just pop a tube in and not worry about it”. But the wheels had a different idea altogether.
The damn tires would not set properly into the rim all the way, causing the ride to be bumpy.
As one might expect, the manufacturers go to great lengths to tell you absolutely nothing about this issue (I had this issue with both Zipp and Hunt), so I foolishly wasted good time and money replacing tires, tubes and rims. Finally I found some dark corner of the internet (e.g. Reddit) where some MTB folks discussed the issue of tire setting into the rim. Ironically, it should not happen with a tube!
And so started my tire setting adventure.
I started gently: I played some nice soothing music, dimmed the lights, lit scented candles, caressed and massaged the tires, whispering sweet nothings. The tires wouldn’t budge.
I got angry and decided to teach it a lesson; I drowned it in soap water, pumped it to 5,000 PSI and waited for the blissful pop. Nada.
After many hours and dollars wasted on this stupidity I am still stuck with almost but not quite round wheels.
The wheels won, I give up. I’ll sell all my triathlon equipment, leave my family and society behind, go live in a cave somewhere and try to forget about the shameful defeat. I’m done.
🤣🤣🤣 I’ve been there brother. Fortunately I was able to get GP5000 TL TdF tires to seat on Vision Metron 81 wheels after extensive cleaning under the rim hook. PIA!
Ironically, I was very skeptical of tubeless for quite some time when I first heard about the idea. But I went through the months of October and November unable to complete a single training ride without having to swap a tube out on the side of the road. Decided to give tubeless a try. Absolutely sold.
Your username may give it away, but where or what types of roads do you ride? Getting flats every ride, or nearly every?It does, more or less. I don’t actually live in Vegas anymore. Still close, but I am outside of Vegas. I was picking up a lot of goat heads or mesquite thorns. And yes, pretty much at least once a ride. Occasionally twice in a single ride. Beyond frustrating.
I was an early road tubeless adopter, e.g. doing it with old Stan’s tubeless conversion kits with regular non-tubeless-ready rims and tires (sketchy AF in retrospect, but worked at the time). More than 10 years ago?
All the way to using the latest generation of rims and tires. Including Hunt (MTB and road).
I think you just got unlucky. Some combinations can be finicky. I’ve been riding American Classic Argent tubeless for ages, many many thousand miles on pretty much the worst roads in the U.S. Every hole has sealed up without me having to stop, except for one in all these years. I’ve spent thousands on other wheelsets and always come back to these. They just work.
Can’t you just run tube and clincher on tubeless wheels? I have HED wheels that are tubeless but have had no issues with latex tubes G5k clinchers on them.
im genuinely interested in how you can have a bumpy tire. I’ve done this hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of times and never had the experience you had
Can you take to the shop to see if they can fix it, I’m under 3 minutes?
Maybe I have no talent (my wife enthusiastically approves this theory).
Maybe I am unlucky and the combination of zipp 404/808 with conti gp 5 as well as hunt with vittoria corsa both somehow failed.
Or perhaps its a stupid design that depends on high precision between tire and rim to seal the tire using air pressure, and any imperfection or dust/dirt creates friction between so that the tire is stuck by the air pressure and can’t move all the way up to the hook.
But forget rationality, I suspect there’s a higher cosmic power involved. Tonight I will sacrifice a small goat to Lucifer inside a burning pentagram, then try again to reseat the stupid tires. If it works I will happily denounce all my beliefs and join the tubeless religion. Then all I’ll need is a slightly bigger flat kit that could fit a small animal.
If the tire doesn’t fully seat properly, the tire will be a bit wobbly on the wheel causing a bumpy ride. The OP doesn’t mention whether an air compressor is being used rather than a floor pump. The only other tip I’ll add is to put the tires in the sun for a few minutes before mounting. It really helps to make them more flexible and easier to install.
I JUST went tubeless a couple weeks ago. Bought HUNT wheels and could not get them set up, but then took them to a respected local mechanic who showed me tricks of the trade how to do it properly. Even the YouTube videos weren’t that great–but seeing it first hand, yeah, it is quite easy once you get the hang of it. I have bought Fillmore Valves and regular tubeless universal valves. I’m having mixed feelings about each one. I can say I’m really enjoying the HUNT wheels. There is a 20-25% off their wheels on the site right now…so I nabbed a pair and no issues so far. They are holding air quite well.
From my limited scope of using Tubeless the last few weeks, if I were only on a trainer most of the time I would not use Tubeless. No need, nothing to really roll over & puncture.
