Hello all,
Last night I attempted to set my raceface wheels up tubeless.

I installed some superstar rim tape first, a little fiddly as didn’t stick as well as i’d thought it would. A little patience and stretching the tape good and tight seemed to work though. I overlapped it quite a bit as the first bit wasn’t as tight as I may have liked.

Cut a little slit with a knife and popped some valves in.

First tyre, a mavic crossmax charge. Soaped up the tire and went up with no issues – easy! It appears to be leaking quite badly from the valve. Is the valve not tight enough? it’s just finger tight. Or will it be fine once I add the sealant? (this was a dry run to seat the tyre). Or is it something else?

Next tyre – brand new continental trail king protection. Tried adding loads of soapy water, bouncing the tyre, putting a tube in first and generally pumping like mad while swearing, no joy – I just can’t get the bead to seat? Any ideas? I really don’t want to use a compressor.

I’ve currently got both up with tubes at a good pressure and left them sitting there since last night. Thoughts being that it might ‘break’ the continental in. And also might help stick the tape better.

Any help appreciated.

try a co2 can on the continental should whack the tyre into the bead in seconds, I always carry one out riding these days incase I need to re-seat a tyre.
As for leaking from the valve, get some sealant in, that should sort it

This is how I do it. Works every time. First, put the tubes in and pump them to 40psi, in the morning tube out, valve in making sure the valve is really tight but finger tight. Track pump like mad and it should seat no probs. then let the tyre down and add sealant, pump up again and shake the sealant around. Shake the wheel as if you are looking for gold in a tray in a river if you know what I mean, that way you evenly distribute the sealant..may the force be with you…,!

My friendly local garage seated my Conti Supersonics for me, even with their compressor it wasn’t that easy to be honest – just very floppy tyres!

Good luck!

Avoid CO2 if you’re using Stans as it can react with the fluid.

If you’ve got removable valve cores that can help with the initial pump, or make one of these tyre bongs for 9p and you’ll be seated reet:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/ghetto-tubeless-inflator-total-cost-9p

I use the bong with the core removed and only need to get it up to 40psi. When it’s up, finger over the valve, then core back in, reattach pump and inflate to 40psi. Then do the hokey cokey to get the sealant coverage.

My ghetto tubeless (schraeder valves + duct tape) always need sealant to seal around the valve but a good shake does the job. Make sure you shake the bottle well before use and invert it to get those lovely particles out. When I used rubber rim strips they held ‘dry’.

Oh, and once things are inflated I tighten the valves a touch more as they’re pushed out a little.

I used CO2 to seat my NN’s first time, I know it’s not recommended but I never had an issue with it reacting to the sealant.

e2a – should probably add that Stans recommend keeping the valve on the opposite side to the sealant (ie. the top) if you absolutely must use CO2.

It was a 1-1 draw in my tubeless attempts last night. Superstar/ Alex rims. Brand new minion went up straight away with a track pump. Used Swampthing won’t go up. It’s so very close but just won’t catch. Tyre and rim well soaped up, pressing down around the valve area and using a Lezyne Dirt Drive HV track pump. Most frustrating.

Reading the comments above and elsewhere, are folk ghetto’ing non-tubeless rims with just the yellow tape? I had been thinking about this as a way of cutting the weight down. If I understand it correctly

Yellow tape = sealing off the bed of the rim and making it airtight

Rim strips = forming an air chamber with the tyre

However if you’ve made the rim air tight with the yellow tape, you can ditch the rim strip and just stick a tyre on and some Stan’s fluid?

I used CO2 to seat my NN’s first time, I know it’s not recommended but I never had an issue with it reacting to the sealant.

I don’t think that it reacts as such, it’s just that the CO2 will dry out the fluid quicker and when you crack the tyre open you’ll find a massive congealed blob.

When you are trying to pump it up, press the palm of your hand on the tyre where the valve is and push it onto the rim.
It stops all the air escaping straight out the side of the tyre.

BoardinBob – Member

Reading the comments above and elsewhere, are folk ghetto’ing non-tubeless rims with just the yellow tape? I had been thinking about this as a way of cutting the weight down. If I understand it correctly

People talk about it… I’ve never had it work, Mavics (721 and I think 717, but maybe 719…) lasted til the first hard corner, sets up nicely on my 5.1s but you can burp it with your thumbs so I don’t think it’ll work… But people say it does work with all of these, so I am skeptic.

Got home tonight, took the tubes out of both tyres and both went up without a hitch – not even soapy water needed!

Sealant in both now, seems to have dealt with the leaky valve so after doing my ‘panning for gold’ act for a good 5 minutes on each we’ll now play the waiting game.

Cheers for all the tips.

I’m having real trouble with my race race turbine and Hans dampf mix.

Also use the bucket trick. Leave the wheel on a bucket for 30 minutes or longer then flip. It helped my continental tire that had very leaky sidewalls.

Never had a problem wuith co2 myself however I only seat it with co2 then let down to 15-20 psi and inflate to 40psi with a track pump 3 or 4 times. Solves the sealant drying out problem. CO2 is fine to seat a tyre on the trail to get you home as long as you have the valve at the top of the wheel so as not to blow cold co2 directly onto the sealant.

Swampthing was a pig to get up last night even with a compressor and loads of soapy liquid. The only solution was to rotate the tyre on the rim until I found a spot where it would go up with the compressor. Never had that problem before as the compressor has always worked first time. The tyre is now up, seated, sealed and it stayed up overnight.

Really really struggled with used tyres to get them seated and sealed with a Stan’s conversion. Only seemed to work with new tyres.

Found that the inner tube trick worked a treat as well as taking them on and off a few times.

Getting them sealed always seems pretty easy but getting them sealed with the bead seated properly (i.e. so the tyre runs true) always seems to be a struggle.