Stans No Tubes fitting nightmare!

paganman

Over the last few weeks I've had multiple punctures (hedge cutting time for all the farmers around here) so decided to go the no tubes route on mine & my lads 29er's. My wife has 26" Mavic UST's and tubeless tyres and has had no puntures, ever, so I was looking forward to more of the same.

I bought the relevant kits and to date have wasted 2 mornings and numerous swear words trying to get the bloody things to take air, I've followed the instructions to the letter, including drilling out the valve stem hole, I've watched the funny little fella on the video numerous times, but they will not take air. I got the correct rim strips after reading the Stans website guide

The rims I've tried so far are:
Superstar 29er with stans 29er rim strip then stans plus 4 rim strip
Bontrager Mustang 29er with plus 4 rim strip and the bontrager rim strip
American Classic All mountain 29er with a standard rim strip, and also tried a plus 4 rim strip.

With these rims I've tried the following tyres:
Maxis Ardent
Schwalbe Nobby Nic tubeless
WTB Bronson
WTB Wolverine

In every case, after fitting the rim strip and mounting the tyre I cannot get it to take any air. I've tried every tyre and rim combo with no result. I even took them to the local garage and tried a compressor, but air just leaked from all around the bead.

I've e-mailed Stans and got no reply.

I hope I'm missing something obvious and any advice given will be gratefully received.

'

bails87

Have you used lots of soapy water, more bubbles than water actually, around the bead/rim?

I found a conversion to be a right pain and have gone back to tubes.

cooldad

+1 tubular potato

Barteos

Did you remove the valve core in order to increase the air flow?

paganman

Thanks for the responses, I tried lots of soapy water and the valve core out to increase airflow.
Maybe I should just get a refund and buy more inner tubes/patches. Lol

Dirtydog11

paganman wrote:

Over the last few weeks I've had multiple punctures (hedge cutting time for all the farmers around here) so decided to go the no tubes route on mine & my lads 29er's. My wife has 26" Mavic UST's and tubeless tyres and has had no puntures, ever, so I was looking forward to more of the same.

I bought the relevant kits and to date have wasted 2 mornings and numerous swear words trying to get the bloody things to take air, I've followed the instructions to the letter, including drilling out the valve stem hole, I've watched the funny little fella on the video numerous times, but they will not take air. I got the correct rim strips after reading the Stans website guide

The rims I've tried so far are:
Superstar 29er with stans 29er rim strip then stans plus 4 rim strip
Bontrager Mustang 29er with plus 4 rim strip and the bontrager rim strip
American Classic All mountain 29er with a standard rim strip, and also tried a plus 4 rim strip.

With these rims I've tried the following tyres:
Maxis Ardent
Schwalbe Nobby Nic tubeless
WTB Bronson
WTB Wolverine

In every case, after fitting the rim strip and mounting the tyre I cannot get it to take any air. I've tried every tyre and rim combo with no result. I even took them to the local garage and tried a compressor, but air just leaked from all around the bead.

I've e-mailed Stans and got no reply.

I hope I'm missing something obvious and any advice given will be gratefully received.

'

It sounds like you need to create a tighter seal between the rim and tyre bead, try some Velox rim tape under the rimstrip.

Northwind

Various tricks to try...

First, fit the tyre with a tube and inflate hard, leave overnight- helps get the tyre into the right shape and gets it onto the beads. Then, when you remove the tube, only unbead one side of the tyre- this way when you come to reseal it you're only doing half the work as the tyre is already half fitted

Next... When you refit the tyre, most importantly make sure it's clear of the valve- a mate of mine was frantically pumping away with the tyre not actually over the valve, so he was trying to inflate the rest of the atmosphere instead

You can pull the tyre a little onto the bead as well by hand- harder to do with some than others but every little bit you do can help. Even just making sure it's sitting onto the side of the rim rather than in the valley, as that allows huge gaps.

Garage tyre inflators aren't very good, neither are those cheap air compressors for cars, they both deliver air at a pretty low rate (actually slower than a really good trackpump sometimes!) A real compressor can fill an mtb tyre in just a second or two.

Once you've started, listen out for where most of the air is escaping from, usually when you're close but it's not working there'll be one big leak. Just fanny around with that part- squeeze it, pull it sideways, just basically get the tyre moving as a big gap won't close up without help.

Oh and lastly- have a good pump. My Joe Blow is a quality bit of kit but, it doesn't actually push very much air. My Airtower 2 is a much nastier pump but it moves more than twice as much air per stroke which obviously makes a huge difference.

Stu Coops

Totally agree with all the above but once you got it seated right try using an CO2 cartridge as this will fill your tyre with air in a second.

willodabeast

Air compressor, while putting pressure slightly on the tyre were the valve is. There`s so much air going into the tyre it has to inflate.

johnsav

i found them a pain too and just stuck with good old inner tubes.