Suddenly hopeless at puncture repair?

normw

I've done about 30+ punctures in 4 years on my old rim brake scott hybrid with at most one tyre lever to help get the tyre off. I had to do two on my new edinburgh courier 2 this week and couldn't do it by hand, snapped both my plastic tyre levers and resorted to metal ones and a lot of brute force.

The end result being both rims are now scuffed to pieces where I've had to lever the tyre both off and back on and I almost bent a metal tyre lever!

The differences are I had rim brake rims with Vittoria tyres and now have disc brake rims with Kenda tyres. Even so, I have no idea how I all of a sudden seem unable to do the simplest task on a bike?

I used to be able to roll the tyre to one side then back over and hook it out from inside the rim but this no longer seems to work. Hard to describe.

Is there a different technique for disc brake rims or where am I going wrong?

The Rookie

Nothing to do with disc or rim braking, the rim profile is the same.

Double wall rims, particularly those which are tubeless 'ready' have a shallower well making the tyre harder to fit, also some tyres have tighter beads than others.

My decent MTB tyres on tubeless rims all need 2 levers, my tubeless rim with folding Conti non tubeless) tyres on my commuter likewise. Good quality plastic levers are a must.

compuwiz_uk

i have 6 bikes currently & they range from simple thumbs do the trick of tyre removal & refitting ( although getting the tyres to seat right is a mare still on that one ) to 3 very sturdy tyre levers & lots of swearing involved in tyre removal & refitting.

fatty has the easiest tyres to remove & refit without tools ( but they are a swine to keep seated evenly/correctly while inflating as there is just so much movement allowed by the 4" width & fairly deep rims etc - lots of manual adjustments of the tyres at low pressures to seat it in the correct place on the rim before going nuts to 20psi to seat it )

cx & commuter road are both 1 lever & slide it down a little / use fingers ( depends on how warm a day it is as to how easy they are to do ( warm days seem easier )

29er HT front is break the bead & thumbs have it, rear ( same tyre brand/make but stiffer side walled = needs a lever, occasionally 2 )

FS 27.5 - needs a couple of levers both ways but seats in the rims nicely & once done pressure can be dropped alot without the tyre coming away etc

carbon road is a swine ( even when trying the very same tyres used on the commuter road with relative ease ), minimum 2 levers ( often needs a 3rd ) both ways & many, many swearwords involved - then pumping up the tyre is horrendous when the tyre is back on the rim as it takes some silly pressures - 90-95psi - before the tyre seats on the rim properly ( can try seating it manually @ lower pressures but doing so often knocks out the tyre seating elsewhere on the rim or just wont happen ) & it then seats on the rim with a hell of a POP that scares the hell out of me every time lol ( may have to try some washing up liquid in water next time on the rim/bead to assist with seating )

my weapons of choice for levers are pedros yellow numbers ( well green ones too for the carbon to match its colours - may even have a couple of orange ones for the red bike too - not sure now, will have to check lol ) & a topeak 1.2 as reserve set of levers for the troublesome beggers that need more than 2 ) i do have a few plastic coated metal cored numbers in the toolbox just incase BUT not needed them just yet )

gone are the days of using the old table spoon handles ( they bend FAR, FAR too easy on modern rim/tyre combos lol ) & i donated all my old cheap puncture kit levers to a less modern biked household nearby after i tried one for a laugh on the FS ( too lazy to open the toolbox so just grabbed the cheapies from the puncture kit) & it snapped trying to break the bead let alone lever the tyre off the rim lol