I’m trying to fit some Ikons tubeless but they won’t inflate — seated one side of the bead with a tube, tried every trick I know — no joy.
I’m stuffed without a compressor or bigger track pump, right?

Have you tried taking the valve core out to get it seated? It’ll go down again when you take the pump off, but it’s worked for me before to get the tyre seated for the first time.

no — thanks very much.
will try that.

If you’ve not tried the valve trick I doubt you’ve tried fitting the tyre with a tube, then letting down, take 1 side of tyre off and remove inner, then inflate with sealant+valve.

and if all that fails, a squirt of neat washing up liquid around the tyre wall works everytime

If it helps, I fitted two Ikons tubeless, one to a Flow, the other to a 355 No Tubes rim. I seated one side with a tube then used a tyre lever to mostly seat the bead on the other side – just work your way round till it’s too tight to continue and they went up fine. So it’s not impossible.

+1 remove valve

Plus no need for a compressor, use the ghetto tubeless inflator…

works every time!

nice. will try to seat the bead a bit more with lever — and fairy liquid 🙂
yeah, did the tube thing. Even considered cutting it and pulling it out so as to leave both sides seated. . .

CO2 does it for me.

and. . . success!
fairy liquid on the first one plus grabbing the tyre and pulling it onto the bead worked.
The second one went on dry even without a tube first; I just worked the bead up onto the rim with my hands.
I realise it’s actually a better design in some ways than tighter fitting schwalbes — those need a real wrestle to get onto the rim at all.
Thanks everyone!

and. . . success!
fairy liquid on the first one plus grabbing the tyre and pulling it onto the bead worked.
The second one went on dry even without a tube first; I just worked the bead up onto the rim with my hands.
I realise it’s actually a better design in some ways than tighter fitting schwalbes — those need a real wrestle to get onto the rim at all.
Thanks everyone!