Bought a new Orange P7 late last year and On Yer Bike in Burnley use Gorilla Tape as rim tape. After losing pressure three times I decided to rip the tyres off (perfect ecxuse for new tyres 🙂 ) and these muppets have wrapped front rim in three miles of gorilla tape and left the rear wheel with the standard plastic tape from factory.

Bought stans rim tape and gunk etc, but the front wheel is covered in lumpy adhesive which is a pig to remove.

Will it be OK to wrap the rim over the tape??

Lighter fluid, then a going over with wet and dry. Leave wheel in house to warm up.

I’m going to do that with a rear Hope Enduro rim. 2 pairs of 35W’s and a front Enduro all sealed with Gorilla Tape and seated with no leaks, but the rear Enduro not having it.

If it’s covered in a lumpy glue it will be difficult to ensure you’re getting a good seal.

Also, if you have a thick layer of glue it will be inclined to creep under stress/pressure so your tape may migrate to one side or just get in a mess.

I’d also try best as you can to remove it. I generally use Meths (I still have some from when I used to use a Trangia) but sticky stuff removing are also available.

iirc a small plastic scraper (e.g. an old credit card) has helped me out in the past. Softening it up before hand certainly wont hurt though

Rim needs to be clean when taping, scotchbrite pad/wire wool and brake cleaner/solvent, followed by IPA spray and a wipe down.

If someone brings me a wheel that’s been gorilla taped, they get sent home to clean it all off and come back at a later date! Yes it maybe cheap, but the mess it makes is not worth it IMO.

Bird Bikes sell a tubless tape that is very good, thin and sticky, needs 3 wraps but its by far the easiest tape to apply. Find stans to thick and you get air bubbles underneath, the yellow tesa stuff i’ve tried wasn’t sticky at all.

If someone brings me a wheel that’s been gorilla taped, they get sent home to clean it all off and come back at a later date! Yes it maybe cheap, but the mess it makes is not worth it IMO.

you mean cloth taped. Gorilla is a wide brand that makes many different products. to say a whole brand is “not worth it” is just ignorant.

gorilla make a product that is far superior to stans tape(which i hate with a passion because its shit) and i can see why folk get confused because Gorilla is the brand.

The right gorilla tape isnt cheap (its the waterproof clear stuff)

What a fantastic advert for a bike shop. What a shower of clowns. If I were you I’d take it back there and get them to clean it for you as punishment for doing a bodge job in the first place.

Use acertone to remove any goo as it won’t leave any residue, or nail varnish remover which is acertone.

“What a fantastic advert for a bike shop. What a shower of clowns. If I were you I’d take it back there and get them to clean it for you as punishment for doing a bodge job in the first place.”

Yes and no, If the bike shop says yes we clean it but prob going to be extra hours labour to clean it all off, they prob moan like hell and say they taking the piss etc,
I am sure they prob tell them, “might be best for you to clean it all off or we going have to charge £xx to do it” give them the option.

“The right gorilla tape isnt cheap (its the waterproof clear stuff)”
Well 95% of people prob don’t know that, they use the black stuff and prob using it to keep cost down! so prob not looking at the more expensive stuff. Plus Gorilla tape don’t have much choice of widths.

I only had a couple of issues with stans tape and that’s been on wheels that have been set up tubeless for a long time and tyres been swapped often.
Find stan have a good range of widths for diff rims, easy to fit if you keep the tape taut and apply pressure to the tape in the right direction.

more expensive than acetone/nail varnish remover but worked a treat shifting thick glue residue from a set of old CX tub wheels so that I could install new tubs with tape.

https://www.wiggle.co.uk/effetto-mariposa-carogna-tubular-tape-remover-150ml/

Disc Brake cleaner works well to remove the residue. Took me about 20 mins to completely clean a rim. As said above its easier when at room temperature.

If you use stans tape you’ll need to clean it but most of the area will be under the tape they left on underneath so less hassle. (Petrol/acetone)

If you don’t want to clean it use some T-Rex … the glue part is different to gorilla and it comes off with some isopropyl really easily compared to gorilla where the glue is in a grid.
It’s also more waterproof .. but will stick over the grid left and probably remove some when you finally do remove it. I’ve got rims taped up 4-5 years ago though and it’s still as good as it was then.. (stuck a tyre on one yesterday)

As other says, IPA, Acetone or disc brake cleaner, some type of plastic scraper is good as well, and lots of time.

Gorilla “Gaffer tape” is an abomination as a way to try and seal rims.

Gorilla clear repair tape works pretty well but I think rim strips are generally a better, cleaner option.

All the non-UST wheels I’m running tubeless use rim strips rather than tape

I just use electrical tape 🙂

I’ve used the cheap gorilla cloth tape to do a few sets of wheels and it’s been absolutely fine, if a bit heavy.

Cleaning it off later is a real pain in the arse mind.

Trick is to warm the tape before you even attempt to remove it, and any residue that’s left you use a strong solvent to remove.

Because I mess about with cars, and I’ve got a workshop full of car stuff, I tend to use cellulose thinner gun wash to clean rims. It’s about the cheapest solvent to buy in massive quantities, but it’s horrible stuff, you need well ventilated work space, you need protection for your hands, and you need some microfibre cloth that you’re not too precious about.

If I didn’t have that lot, I’d probably use the right tape. If I’m doing wheels for someone else, they get the proper stuff.

Firstly dont wrap proper tubeless rim tape over any existing tape of any sort.

Secondly you really have to get the rim completely clean otherwise your are bound to have issues with it.

Finally I dont know why people use gorilla tape (or other tape) – I appreciate its a little bit cheaper but proper tubeless rim tape is only around £10 so the saving is not that great in the scheme of things so do it right and you stand a much better chance of ending up with a reliable setup.

If I didn’t have that lot, I’d probably use the right tape. If I’m doing wheels for someone else, they get the proper stuff.

Aye. I’m happy to bodge my own bikes, it’s a different rule for actual paying customers.

Not trying to be obtuse, but I see again and again people complaining about Gorilla cloth tape leaving residue – I’ve used it on 6 or 7 different types of rim, and I’ve never had this issue.
Are people just ripping it off? If you slowly and steadily pull it off I find it comes off with barely a blob of glue left on.

The clear tape is OK but quite stretchy IME, and a PITA to cut to width. I don’t use Gorilla because it’s cheaper (I’ve bought Stands in the past) – I use it because it’s much easier to conform to the shape of the rim bed – I find Tesa(Stans) really only works if you’ve got a rim with a really flat bed, it’s a PITA to get in the well in the middle as it’s too brittle IMO.

One only gripe with cloth Gorilla is that it tends to pull off when you remove a tyre, so has to be retaped.

The other great thing about Gorilla cloth tape, is that you can usually find somewhere open that’s got it in stock. 🙂

people say bodge like stans tape isn’t just some off the shelf tape repackaged…..

Maybe theres a killing to be made getting some custom width clear gorilla tape repackaged in tubeless kit packaging.

I just use electrical tape

I did this for a while. Works fine for sealing, but it’s too soft and tight tyres will scrape it off if you ever have to remove them.

Yellow Tesa works well. I can imagine the clear Gorilla tape would work well too, although I think it’s somewhat thicker which may or may not be a good thing.

Hairdryer will also help with goo removal. Having experimented with various options I just got sick of stuff not working so went back to Stans…

Used Gorilla cloth tape for years on plenty of wheels never had an issue, IPA to remove with a plastic blade easy enough.
DT Swiss use some quite nice tape no idea if it’s an off the shelf option?

I still don’t get why people still use expensive Gorilla stuff, even the clear one, when TESA 4289 is so cheap, easy to apply and very reliable with just one pass.

Removing gorilla tape residue?

Come back when you’ve had to remove the fluorescent stripes off a cop car.

That is a whole new world of pain.

Your not advocating a bodge there are you nickfrog.

It’s not in tubeless packing it must be a bodge.

I stopped using Tesa or derivatives as on the odd occasion a tire had to come off the tape would have gone brittle and anything that touched it would split it where it was under tension – or over spoke holes where as I find gorilla clear to be much more resilliant

Yes and no, If the bike shop says yes we clean it but prob going to be extra hours labour to clean it all off

Which they can charge to themselves for making an arse of it in the first place.

Thanks Guys, look slike elbow grease is the word.
I’m not taking the wheel back, the shop is 40 miles away from where I live and they’ve had two chances to do the job properly.

I just left them a pants review on Google in full detail.

google On yer Bike Burnley and look at reviews..

Duct tape = gorilla tape works well on my rims. Nothing wrong in a bike shop using that as long as customer is aware of the choices/cost.

I initially used specific rim tape, tried stans and a few other brands, wasn’t that impressed. Migrated to the “abomination” that is Gorilla tape 🙂 it’s quick and works perfectly for me, I use a heat gun to gently warm it if I want to remove it.

I use the clear Gorilla Tape stuff, I buy a wide width one then fit it so that it over hangs the edge of the rim on oneside (or both sides), then I stick a stanley blade under the hook of the rim and chase it round the rim et voila! Perfect fit every time.

The cloth stuff has no place on a bike, pretty shit that a shop would use it- I guess because they don’t expect to have to deal with future cleanup.

The clear stuff is alright imo. Bit too stretchy when it’s narrow for my taste, I do use it on the fatbike with good results. But I prefer Tesa or electric tape for normal wheels.

The shape of your rim comes into this a bit. Like, if you have a sealed rim (so the whole width doesn’t need taping) and the sunk bed bit is wide enough, you can sometimes tape just the middle of the rim. It works fantastic because the one thing that usually knackers rim taping, is when you push a tyre off and it takes the tape with it- can’t happen if the tyre’s never on it. So my lightbike rims are just taped with 2 layers of electric tape, and it’s been on there for I think 4 years without any fuss

Disc Brake cleaner works well to remove the residue. Took me about 20 mins to completely clean a rim. As said above its easier when at room temperature.

That’s what I came here to say. That or surgical spirit.

Hairdryer and another piece of cloth tape sticky side out got all the gunk off my rims easily without having to use nauseous chemicals.

Then apply Tesa tape.

I no longer use electrical tape, it seems to go brittle over time and is easily damaged getting tyres on and off.

Cloth Gorilla tape here. I use a fresh Stanley knife blade to cut it to width on the roll and the just to the width needed to fit in the spoke recess on the rim. This seems to work well with all the rim and tyre combinations I’ve used and whilst it does take a bit of work with the right chemicals to clean the gunk off it’s easier having not covered the whole inner rim width.

you mean cloth taped. Gorilla is a wide brand that makes many different products. to say a whole brand is “not worth it” is just ignorant.

gorilla make a product that is far superior to stans tape(which i hate with a passion because its shit) and i can see why folk get confused because Gorilla is the brand.

The right gorilla tape isnt cheap (its the waterproof clear stuff)

Loving that it’s “just ignorant” to slag of Gorilla tape but it’s OK to say that Stans is shit without giving any reason .

I stopped using Tesa or derivatives as on the odd occasion a tire had to come off the tape would have gone brittle and anything that touched it would split it where it was under tension – or over spoke holes

yep no reason at all- as quoted by my self in the thread above . At least i was only calling one product they make shit – not the whole of the stans range (ala someone who says gorilla tape is shit) Stans sealant still is number 1 for me.

Gorilla handy tape (1 inch wide stuff) on 2 sets of plus bike rims. Sealed first time when taped up over 3 years ago and still holding air today, despite multiple tyre changes on both sets. Dunno about glue residue, I’ve never had to re-tape them.