How much sealant to use in tubeless set up?

It’s never going to work properly with a standard rim tape.

Yeah I’ll get some rim tape tomorrow.

One thing I notice doing this is how shitty/bodged the valve fastens/interfaces with the tubeless rim. For at start you don’t have perfectly flat surface on the inner and outer rim, yet you want to use a round wedge and a flat locking nut to make a seal.

This is a tubed design, made to easily accept a valve bonded to the inner tube with minimum fuss, now mechanically comprised in accepting tubeless.

Far better to weld/machine a threaded flange or nipple to the rim itself and screw on your valve of choice. You could either use PTFE tape or machine a small flat to create a seal with an o ring.

Sorry if this sounds a bit negative, but you have gone to town slating tubeless setup as a faff, but you aren’t actually using tubeless rim tape, despite a few of us asking about it earlier on. There are some really good YouTube clips from Stans and others that take you through the whole process, from start to finish. On your valve point, the tubeless valves all tend to be rubber based which sit well on tubeless rim tape. The seal is not on the outside, all the lock nut does is compress things inside the rim where it seals with its rubber base against the tubeless rim tape.

One thing I notice doing this is how shitty/bodged the valve fastens/interfaces with the tubeless rim. For at start you don’t have perfectly flat surface on the inner and outer rim, yet you want to use a round wedge and a flat locking nut to make a seal.

As Ian says, the seal is between the valve and the tubeless tape. If you’d done a tiny bit of research or spoken to someone in your local bikeshop or even asked on here rather than just plunging in thinking you knew it all you’d have found the process a lot less painful.

Just to add balance (not smugness, honest)
Just put together a new tubeless setup (for only the second time in my life).
Hope 20five 700c rims
Two layers of Stans tape
Simple cross cut, to poke Stans valve through
59ml sealant in each tyre
40mm nano rear
42mm resolute front

Popped tyres on, left the last bit open, poured in sealant, levered rest of tyre onto rim.

Used a bog std (little bit knackered) track pump and bingo! Straight up, bead seated at around 45psi, still holding pressure now, 3hrs later, no seapage

Seriously a piece of cake, although maybe I just got lucky, or maybe they will explode overnight, or maybe burp off the rim when I finally ride them…

The MTB wheels are good now, just wasn’t a great seal around the valve which the latex eventually sealed up.

The gravel bikes wheels were very fiddly to hand ‘seat’ the bead before pumping. Ok so right now the tape is their undoing but no way even with ‘proper tape’ would it simply be a case of throwing the tyres on and pumping up easy.

 Ok so right now the tape is their undoing but no way even with ‘proper tape’ would it simply be a case of throwing the tyres on and pumping up easy.

Why do you say that? With tubeless ready tyres, rims, valves, tape and some sealant it should be pretty straightforward.

^^^^ and I bet the MTB ones go flat seeing as they don’t have tubeless tape on the rims 🙂

I still say this is a laughably bad engineering solution. The MTB’s rear sealed fine the front has lost a little pressure.

I put some tubeless tape on the gravel bike. Rear would get a reasonable seal with a home made valve gasket. Seems to have healed itself. The front so far leaks even worse around the valve and currently hoping it will self-seal but so far it’s too bad.

For me the two best innovations in mountain biking in the last ten years have been 1x drive trains and tubeless tyres. On Sunday for example I picked up a large thorn in the front tyre (still attached to its branch!). I just pulled it out, spun the wheel once to seal it and carried on riding like nothing had happened.

Well I used up the rest of my rim tape with another wrap. Still no luck. The sealant just pissed out around the valve. Two days wasted on this garbage. Will need new rim tape and more sealant even if this joke of a system will even work. No o-rings or thread to put ptfe just makes it laughable compromised form engineering point of view. I’d never advise anyone to use this shit.

Some years ago someone one here pointed me to the Stans youtube video

I still do all the wheels this way and have never had a problem with any of them. I did two new wheels that came with a bike on Saturday afternoon in just under 20 mins which included removing the existing tubes.

Something doesn’t seem right but cant make it out from what you are saying. Can you post up some more pics so we can help.

The video has nothing about the tape or valve. The valve to rim interface is where it leaks like mad. Honesty with the way the rubber wedge sits it looks to me like a **** shit way to seal.

How many times? That’s not the source of the leak. It’s the point at which the air is escaping. You’re slagging it off like the village idiot with half the tools to do the job. It’s like having half an inner tube in the tyre and wondering why it won’t blow up.

Do it properly. Use some sticky tape, not non tubeless specific rim tape (which is about as useful as Velox cloth tape in this application). Go and buy some Stans tape, or Gorilla tape, couple of layers round the rim, cut a small hole to put the valve through, do it up, tyre on, sealant in just before the end & blow it up. if you’re really unlucky in getting it to seat properly, put a bit of soapy water round the bead.

If you can’t manage that, maybe you should just stick to tubes.

It was Schwalbe tubeless so don’t call me an idiot. Admittedly it wasn’t very sticky.

That pictures you have posted up is not tubeless tape – you can see all the sealant underneath it!

The tape is meant to seal the rim, not let all the sealant (and air) under it….

laughable compromised form engineering point of view.

And yet people have been able to manage to tubeless all sorts of none tubeless wheel and tyre combos for years with little fuss.
Its not the tubeless that’s the problem here.
Still you knock yourself out and ignore the good advice that people have given you.

That pictures you have posted up is not tubeless tape – you can see all the sealant underneath it!

The tape is meant to seal the rim, not let all the sealant (and air) under it…

I replaced that tape.

Which rims & which tyres are you using?

Have a look at this, it works with any tape including duct tape if that’s all that’s about. For someone who has asked for help you aren’t helping any of us

Still no luck. The wheel with the blue tape goes from about 40 psi to 10 psi in 20 mins. The one with the Stan’s yellow tape leaks like a sieve around the valve. This is Stan’s tubeless tape but it’s not at all sticky and air can easily get under it to the spoke holes. I assume that air pressure is supposed to force it down and seal it?

Unless anyone knows what I’m doing wrong then I am done with this. At least 8 hrs of work wasted and time to move back to tubed except for the MTB.

I did my first ever tubeless tyre install this week.
I used gorilla tape, after checking it was the right width, as that’s what I had.
Admittedly it was then a real pain to get the tyre beads up on to the raised part of the rim enough that at least some air would stay inside. Eventually managed that and it inflated with just my track pump.

The down side is that it deflates fairly quickly. However, in my case it turns out there is a hole in the sidewall of the tyre (Grrr). I can feel the air coming out with my hand over it and can see sealant coming out too. I’m hoping it seals itself up.

It’s absolutely vital the tape seals the spoke and valve holes. Air pressure does not hold it down. It needs to be stuck so that the air can’t get past. Really carefully check every hole to make sure there are no gaps or bubbles. Make sure the wheel rim is clean, dry and grease free before trying to stick tape to it.

The yellow tape in your last pic doesn’t appear to be stuck to the rim. It even seems to have a ‘dent’ in it. I can’t see that holding air in at all.
The blue one looks better, but it still looks like it might have gaps. It’s hard to tell from the pic.

If it’s leaking out around the valve, after making sure the tape is properly sealed, cut as small a hole as possible to get the valve through. Then make sure it is tightly screwed in.

The theory is simple. Every part must be air tight. The tape seals the valve and spoke holes in the wheel. The sealant fills in any (small enough) holes in the tyre.
In practice it can be fiddly, but it really does work.

The Stans tape is sticky but you look like you have not done a good job of putting it on as it looks too loose . You need a clean and dry rim and you have to pull the tape tight when you apply it , also on the wheel with the blue tape your bodged gasket is doing nothing to help, you would be better off removing it and the valve will seal perfectly well . You could probably salvage the situation by putting a tube in and inflating it and leaving it over night as that should get the tape to stick down and then try to get the tyre to inflate tubeless .

The rim was cleaned. The tape isn’t particularly sticky and it has that crinkly ‘stiff’ feel which means it ‘does not want to lay flat’ very easy. Perhaps it’s too wide because it has to sit in a bit of a valley and it tends to ‘crinkle’.

I’d probably be better off with gaffer tape.

That tape looks way too slack, it’s needs to be pulled on with some tension not just placed into the rim.
I always use Gorilla tape I’ve had a 100% success rate.
The only reason this isn’t working is how you are doing it

That tape looks way too slack, it’s needs to be pulled on with some tension not just placed into the rim.

I already said. The Stan’s tape does not stick to the rim.

Well it does for everybody else . I work in the trade and for the last 10 years I have probably done an average of 2 or 3 tubeless conversions a week during that time , usually with Stans tape and it does stick , the valves do seal , the sealant does seal any small leaks and it does work 100% of the time if you do it properly.

I’ll repeat my earlier question. Which rims, which tyres?

As said already you’ve really got to pull on the Stan’s tape to get a good seal. I find if you put the roll of tape somewhere warm first it’s easier to stretch on the rim.

Saying that I’ve used Gorilla tape for my last two pair of wheels. My gravel/road wheels being the most recent, probably 30/40 minutes to do the pair.

Thought I had sorted this now using a thinner tape (0.5″) and doing two wraps which overlap and so sit better in the concave part of the rim.

Sadly though I’m still slowly losing pressure.

Not sure what issue is. Cleaned the hell out of the rims with alcohol and tape sticks but not fantastic. When I put the valves in I notice as the rubber wedge beds down on the rim it pushed up very slightly the tape adjacent to it.

Very frustrating and gonna give it 24hrs and if still not holding will go back to tubes.

Sometimes I find you need to actually ride the bike for a bit to get the sealant sloshing around enough to seal.
When I did my gravel bike (Pacenti CL25, Tesa tape & WTB Horizon) they only stayed inflated for about an hour, until I went for a 30 min ride around the block at which point they stayed up.
In the many times I’ve set wheels up tubeless over the years it’s always been operator error that has resulted in failure, usually either tape being insufficiently stuck down or something like over tightening the valve and deforming the seal.

Yeah I actually rode on them for an hour but the front is noticeably losing pressure and the rear is down to 10 psi from 60 overnight.

Took the tyres off and in a couple of places the rim tape has lifted off at the edges.

Rims could not have been cleaner. Cleaned in alcohol.

These are gravel bike rims with quite a concave to them.

I’ve given up. May take them to a local LBS to line with tubeless rim tape down the road.