Battling to get a good seal on my Reynolds carbon rims yesterday using tape, and was wondering if anyone makes some mushroom head rubber grommits to seal the spoke holes instead. Had a look online and coudn’t find anything, but surely this would be a much easier solution.

Wouldn’t the pressure as the tyre compressed tend to just force the grommets all the way through the holes into the rim?

You’d need to have massive heads on them to stop it happening and, effectively, each one would have to have a perfect seal or you’d be constantly losing air past them as you’d be trying to seal 32 punctures the whole time with the sealant.

If you’re having trouble getting tape to stick I’d try giving the rim a wipe with meths or IA to make sure it’s really clean.

there’s veloplugs but they’re not tubeless “sealing” – I guess you could shove some mastic into each joint but proper yellow tape works very well IME

http://www.justridingalong.com/veloplugs.html

Tape should to it, as well a good clean as wwaswas said, scuff up the surface a bit with a green scotch pad first to give it a better surface to stick to.

Hopefully obvious but.. have you added sealant? Usually require some at least to seal small leaks around the valve hole etc.

Gorilla tape ftw.

Just to note, I got it all sorted fine and have done a few bikes in the past, but the shape of the rim channel made it tricky to get a good smooth tape run.

Also, does the tape HAVE to sit in the bead lock as well? wondering if you could use thinner (width wise) tape just in the channel with enough overlap to cover the holes.

As for the ‘plug’ idea, they wouldn’t see much load – max of 40psi over a 10mm diameter – just over 2N – i.e. naff all

I wouldn’t worry about sitting it in the bead I’ve just used some 25mm tape in a 32mm rim bed and it’s sealed fine.

monkeyp – Member

Also, does the tape HAVE to sit in the bead lock as well?

Nope. Could be advantages to it though- makes a tighter seal in theory (though probably weakens the actual bead lock a bit). Oh, you’re more likely to damage the tape when changing tyres, if the tape doesn’t go all the way to the edge, as the tyre will push it aside rather than sitting on top of it.