Fitting tyres novice question

harry58

I've just spent half an hour wrestling with armadillos, I've snapped both trye levers, sliced one inner tube and the tyres arn't still on. I've managed to get them on before but the battles are starting to get me down. Is there any alternatives. To be honest at this point I don't even care about puncture resistance just a road tyre I can actually get on and off, wouldn't mind it being fairly quick. Any help would be great

alan14

First of all, don't use levers to put the tyre back on. As you've found, you can puncture the inner tube and break the levers - I've done it myself.

I have Schwalbe Marathon Plus on the rear and the last 10cm or so is very difficult to get on. Make sure the rest of the tyre is fully bedded into the rim by pressing it down all the way around. You can feel parts of it bedding down as you do this. This produces 2 or 3 millimetres of 'slack' which helps a little bit of the remaining 10cm to go over. Keep repeating this and eventually the last 5cm of the tyre should go over the rim fairly easily. It takes me about 20 minutes.

If I was doing this at home I'd also wear some gardening gloves and put talcum powder on the edge of the rim. You could also heat up the tyre in the oven on a low heat for 10 minutes or so to make it more flexible, though this is something I've never done.

Hope that helps.

PS So much for the puncture resistance of the Marathon Plus; a thorn punctured mine after less than 1000 miles!

alfablue

Whilst some tyres are tougher to fit than others with certain rim combinations, it's mostly about technique. You need to get the beads of the part you fit first right in to the well of the rim, not just at the edge, this gives about 5mm of extra room to fit the tyre, which, whilst holding the wheel on your lap yo work going away from you pushing it on with your thumbs. I don't use levers for fitting just thumb pressure, the last 15cm will be tight but by bending the tyre backwards, away from you, it should pop on.

alfablue

Alan beat me to it, agree with what he says, plus a dilute solution of washing up liquid brushed on the bead can help too.

harry58

Thanks very much really appreciate advice I'll resume battle tommorrow

giant_man

you should use crank brothers' speedlevre plus some talc on the rim. That should get it on.

wilwil

harry58 wrote:

I've just spent half an hour wrestling with armadillos, I've snapped both trye levers, sliced one inner tube and the tyres arn't still on. I've managed to get them on before but the battles are starting to get me down. Is there any alternatives. To be honest at this point I don't even care about puncture resistance just a road tyre I can actually get on and off, wouldn't mind it being fairly quick. Any help would be great

Same problem last weekend. Took half hour to get one off, I gave up getting it back on and I'm selling them to someone I know who likes them. I wondered what it would be like at the road side, in these temps, trying to change a tube. I wrecked my Crank Brothers tyre tool and a tyre lever not to mention my thumbs. I replaced them with the Rubino Pros off my best bike and replaced those with Michelin Pro3s.

Ricardo H

+ 1 for crank brothers speed lever.

STEFANOS4784

-1 for speed lever, i hacked a tyre open with one of these, +1 for practice, force and perseverence

wilwil

giant mancp wrote:

you should use crank brothers' speedlevre plus some talc on the rim. That should get it on.

Broke my Speed Lever. I put liquid soap on it too.

Anonymous

I find it really easy to get my GP4000 and GP4000S tyre on, even in the cold.

monkeypoo

Sounds like you need some muscle & technique. Road tyres are piss easy when your used to 2.5 Dual ply Maxxis tyres on DH rims!

aracer

The other non-obvious trick is to leave the bit of the tyre around the valve to put on last. Because the valve would otherwise stop this bit of tyre sitting down in the well of the rim, you gain that crucial bit of extra slack.

pbracing

As above, always finish at the valve and push it up into the tyre so you don't pinch the valve bulge when easing on the last bit of tyre.

Worth using a bit of talc. I punctured out on the road on Thursday. The old tube was stuck to the inside of the tyre all the way round. Never had that before. Was a newish tube, replaced no too long ago. Anyone know why it happened? Think I'm going to put talc all round inside of tyre from now on.

+1 for alchahol wipes. My bike was clean, but my hands were filthy from the aluminium rims when I'd finished.