There’s a possibility that someone walking past my garage earlier this week might have heard a few grunts, argghs, and f-bombs, which coming from my garage usually means one thing: I’m attempting to change a tubeless tire. Few tasks are more aggravating than trying to get the bead of a tubeless tire to seat on the rim without using the blast of air from a compressor or a floor pump that lets you build up the pressure and then release it all at once.
I don’t have a compressor and my two perfectly fine floor pumps are old school and so I have struggled many times with what should be a fairly straightforward job. But this week, after failing once again (and getting sealant all over the floor), I found this video from Syd and Macky, which saved my day (and kept me from slinking off to my local shop with wheel in hand). You need to watch it to see how the trick works, but the essence is that you manually put the bead in its groove on the rim using a tire iron. You seat half the bead, then flip it over and seat the other, opposite half. If all goes well, the air from a regular floor pump should provide enough pressure to pop the remaining bead into place.
In my case, it was 50-50: The method work for me once, but on the second wheel I got nothing but the pfft pfft pftt of escaping air. In that case, I resorted to using a CO2 cartridge and pocket inflator and that did the job.
Cartridges are of course cheap but the single usage is wasteful. If you have a plain jane pump like me and don’t want a new one, one option is to pick up the Bontrager TLR Flash Can, which you inflate with your pump, then use to blast the tire. Or, if you’re in the market for a new pump, one good choice is the Blackburn Chamber Tubeless floor pump.
Or pay .50¢ at the local gas station to use the air compressor they have for car tires…
Or better yet… go to your local bike shop and ask to use their compressor. Hopefully you have already been using your LBS and have a good relationship with them. If not, that is a great time to start.
When I was a shop mech I never had a problem letting folks setup their tubeless tires on the shop’s compressor. Heck I even did it for people if they were regulars or just nice.
Something he didn’t stress, be sure to have the valve at 12 o’clock if you have put sealant in! Ask me how I know 🙂
I’ve had success with seating a tire with a handpump once, other times it has been with c02. The number of times I have been successful with c02 only to have the valve core unscrew with my inflator are too high to count so be ready with that finger to plug it up!
How do you know?
Here’s my goto technique:
Mount the tire as you would with a tube in place. Remove the valve core providing a bigger orifice to inflate. Floor pump. Seat the bead completely. Add sealant through the valve with a syringe. Reinflate. Boom. Less messy and works like a charm on every tire I ve used.
Yup, removing the valve core is a huge help!!
What if the air is escaping from the spokes.
Retape. This is something these folks mentioned, but in passing. . .tape must be smoothly installed, with no chance for leaks. Tape is probly the number one most important thing besides all the other number one most important things. If one does not retape, even if the holes “seal”, it’s just putting a caustic solution directly on nipples that haven’t changed since before tubeless sealant and are not designed to deal with caustic solutions. Rebuilding a wheel that broke too many nipples isn’t a huge undertaking, but super annoying. Save yaself the trouble.
Hi Paul, yes, it is best to always try and seat a tubeless tire dry first and then put sealant in second. You are correct that many demos show mechanics putting sealant in first. As a mechanic, I can tell you that practice is largely due to laziness / time constraints and wanting to jump to the finish line. I can assure you, however, it sucks to blow a tire off the rim when there is sealant inside. If you have the time to try to seat it dry first, by all means, do it.
You don’t want to clean up that mess especially if you’re using compressed air. That is the risk you run by working with sealant first before trying to seat it dry. Some tire and rim combos simply do not fit together tight enough to seat a tire dry. That’s where you may need a method like the one shown in this video. It does work. I recently tried putting a WTB Vigilante on a DT Swiss rim and had to use this method to get it to seat. You will generally know whether you’re in for a battle or not if you can slip a tire onto a rim with absolutely no effort. That’s a bad sign when it comes to getting the tire to seat on the rim. The harder it is to slip the tire on the rim, the better chance you’ll have of seating the tire dry. No matter what air delivery method you’re using, you will hear the tire seat onto the rim (generally a loud popping sound) once pressure gets to the high 20s. If you take the pressure too far past 30 PSI when initially trying to seat a tire on a rim, you put yourself in the territory to potentially blow it off the rim. Once there is a seal (from the sealant) and the tire is seated, you no longer run that risk of high pressures blowing it off the rim (up to a point). Happy tire setting! Good luck
Hi Jon thanks for the reply! Really informative. Shame it attached itself to another question not to mine but I still found it 🙂
I did that yesterday and it worked like a champ.
Air compressor. Under $40 at Harbor Freight ($32 with the 20% off coupon).
https://www.harborfreight.com/3-gallon-13-HP-100-PSI-Oil-Free-Pancake-Air-Compressor-61615.html
Sorry, but it’s easy to say you don’t need a compressor, but reality is the need for a compressor depends more on tire construction, rim design, temperature, and your pump.
Clearly, having a tire and rim that fit well together is key. Good practice is to remove the valve stem to maximize air flow.
But even with a perfect fit and good technique, tubeless tires can be a PITA to start new.
After setting up hundreds of tubeless tires, here are some options to consider:
1) Preinflate with a tube, let it sit overnight, deflate, pull one side of the tire off to remove tube, try again.
2) Wrap a cam strap around the tire to force the bead closer to the rim.
3) Use a compressor, don’t be a hero. CO2 inflator works if you don’t own a compressor… who doesn’t own a compressor?
If you’re having trouble, an extra layer of rim tape can close up some of the gap between bead and rim, making it easier to get the bead to seat. I’ve had to resort to this even using a compressor for some wheel/tire combinations.
100%. One of our regular go-to fixes at the shop. . .I have even had to tape some same-combo setups differently because the second wouldn’t seat when the first already had. For this reason (and many others), no matter how often a customer’s Maxxis Ikon/Stan’s Arch combo goes together easily, I never put sealant in the tyre before full seat.
All good ideas. Another is to wet the bead with soapy water which aids it sliding onto the rim fairly easy. I use a disposable foam paint brush dipped in a jar of soapy water but a rag works too. I also concur with Ben’s suggestion of using a tube on a stubborn tire. Some folded tires just don’t like being unfolded with air alone. I’ve used the tube-in-tire-overnight method and it works very nicely.
Thanks for making this video! It worked!!! I was really having trouble getting a lose fitting tire/rim combo to seat and your truck totally worked the first time! I actually got it seated and holding pressure at ~ 37 psi dry (no sealant) with only a tiny perceptible air hiss from the valve area. Impressive. It’s just my personal preference to see it dry first before adding sealant. While it’s never happened to me, I’ve heard of plenty of people who have had tires blow off the rim when they try to seat them for the first time and that would be a mess if you put sealant in first. Granted, your truck probably eliminates most of that risk, but I usually do this indoors so I don’t want to take any chances 🙂 Thanks again for posting this tutorial!
Thanks for the tips. I just used a tube, left it aired up for about 30 minutes and then pulled one side and was able to reseat it w/o a tube. I had to spray it with some water, though, to get it to slide on and seal. I was reminded, however, not to use a tool to tighten the tubeless valve unless you bring a tool along in the field. What good does a rescue tube in your backpack do if you can’t take the tubeless valve off?
Is it best to try to fit without sealant first time round then inject through the valve after? Most demos seem to put sealant in first but if it isn’t necessary then surely it is better not to?
Interesting. I’ve never even considered doing this, nor have I ever seen it done. But the real secret to installing tubeless tires is to buy a $40 air compressor and not worry about using a floor pump.
Or…Ryobi makes a 1 gallon 18v compressor for $130. Usually, you can get corded ones for roughly half that at Harbor Freight (but the 18v is cool because you can use it at the trailhead if needs be).
For what or spend on “bike specific” solutions, there are way better options. My little Ryobi stays in my truck. If I need to air up a tire on my bike, my truck, or someone else’s bike or car, it’s ready to go. It has more than paid for itself in the year that I’ve had it.
I paid like $30 for a Husky air compressor at local hardware store. Works great.
Exactly. I don’t understand people who can justify spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on bikes, kit, etc but won’t loosen their wallets to extract a couple of $20 bills for a compressor.
My only reasons for spending what I did on my Ryobi is A) it will work anywhere and B) I’m already invested in the system. Either way, even that compressor is less expensive than/equal in price to some of the boost pumps out there. It’s ridiculous.
Awesome – that worked so [relatively] easily!
I did the half&half trick (actually a little past half on each side), then put some air in (doing this before the sealant step would let me back it out without a mess if something went wrong), then added sealant, finished pumping it up until the beads popped.
And I get what everyone’s saying about the inexpensive compressors but I think that I would have needed this method even with a compressor.
Thanks for the tip!
Wow – that was great – thank you so so much. It’s hard work but will get easier thru experience.
As I pumped it up there were a couple loud pops as the bead popped into place.
It was really cool to see the engineering of the bead and tire work – and for that alone is worth learning how to do this technique – man it’s incredible how tightly it fits. I really don’t see a need now for a fancy booster pump or a compressor. I really appreciate the tip. Rock on!