repechage

The aramid bead clinchers that are packaged folded flat are Interesting to say the least upon the initial install, I agree.

rootboy 

I never bust my knuckles mounting tubulars like I do on clinchers.

mikivuckovich

First time always sucks and looks messy. Look up ten different YouTube videos on how to glue up tubs. Each one will reveal the host's unique trick to doing it. I found it helpful to compare each different style of gluing before deciding how to do mine. I only have tubs on my CX wheels, BTW.

verktyg 

I bought a set of Challenge Parigi-Roubaix 700x27c wireless bead clinchers a few years back. I ride mostly classic Mavic MA2 or MA40 rims. I could never get those tires mounted to try them out.

I recently had a set of wheels built with old Super Champion Mod 58 rims. They just slid on like they were greased!


Back to sewups, about 5 years ago when I started riding them again, I tried out at least half dozen different brands of rim cement. The problem with most of the ones that I tried is they don't remain tacky! If I have to change a tire on the road, what's going to keep it on?

Also some of the rim cement like the 3M Fast Tack stuff isn't suitable IMO for road use. While it was rated as having the best adhesion in a comparison test a number of years ago, the people that did the tests must have never had to change a tire on the road!

It probably works great on the track were you rarely have to change a tire but after it sets up, there no residual tackiness!

I switched to Tufo Rim Tape and it's a joy to use. No mess, it goes on fast and I carry a spare roll of it if I have to change a tire.

Older packaging and the new style



Tufo has a video on their website that shows you how to install the tape.

The Tufo tape along with their tire sealant makes riding sewups easy. I use the Tufo Yellow label Tire Sealant.

I've used it to fix a 3mm gash in the threaded area. I was able to get back to my car but it took over night to get a good seal. Note. it doesn't work on sidewall cuts of clinchers.





Cure for flats!



verktyg

Chas.

bibliobob

Winter is a great time to buy tubulars and then let them stretch for a month or two before mounting them.....

CroMo Mike 

ppg667, you don't say, so I'll ask, did you inflate the tires to riding pressure while they were mounted to stretch on the rims overnight? I've ridden tubies for 40+ years and never had to wrestle one onto the rim after it had been stretched onto a rim and left fully inflated overnight.

ppg677

[QUOTE=rootboy;17561739]BTW, PPG, how much air did you have in the tires when you mounted them?]

About 10 psi.

ppg677

Yes, inflated to 100+ psi.

busdriver1959

I use Fast Tack and don't have any trouble removing the tire on the side of the road. I reglue tires with one coat on the tire and one on the rim. Of course there is plenty of old glue on the rim when I do this. I find that there is enough tackyness when changing a flat on the side of the road and haven't ever rolled one.

Road Fan

Rather than acid brushes, I dot the glue around the rim (same for the tire base tape) 360 degrees, then put a baggie over my hand. Then I use my fingers to spread the glue evenly. If I'm careful I get one tire per baggie. If I don't over-glue, I don't get much spilling onto the brake tracks.

Ed.

Another, "I've been riding tubs since before Mr Bowden bought into Raleigh Bicycles..."

This past year I've used Continental glue. Worked fine.

1. Put tires on a rim/wheel with no cement. If hard to get on the rim, do the foot/hand pull as mentioned.
2. Pump them up, hard.
3. Leave them at least overnight, longer if you can.
4. Take the cap of the tube of glue, puncture the top with an icepick or an awl.
5. Squeeze the tube gently and draw a strip (~3/8" wide) between each spoke hole, all around the rim.
6. Release the pressure and remove the 'stretching' tire from its rim.
7. Put valve stem in the rim hole.
8. Have a handy 'outside' corner or pillar located.
9. Hold the wheel horizontal between your stomach and said corner or pillar, with the tire on the upper side.
10. Assume the valve is 12 O'clock - and that's against your stomach.
11. Grab the tire at 10ish and 2ish push, hard, with your hands against the pillar/corner by pulling on the tire. Ease it onto the rim.
12. Slide a little down the tire and repeat. It gets tough when you're down to 5 and 7. Keep at it.
13. There, done. No rubber gloves, no glue on the braking surfaces, minimal, if any, glue on the sidewalls.
14. Catch your breath.
14a. (Oops). Check that the tire runs true. It might need to be pushed and pulled a bit sideways to run straight.
15. Fit the wheel.
16. I've often gone riding immediately after fitting the wheel, but do so gently.

YMMV.

RobbieTunes

I prefer tubulars over clinchers. However, my first time did result in "Tubasti Pants."
There are plenty of pro's and con's.

1-Outstanding bargains can be had on used tubular wheelsets, often from disgruntled or tubular-fatigued owners.
--> often, these come with mounted tires, which can be good (saves money and time) or bad (often a really messy or awful mounting job).

2-Outstanding bargains can be had on lightly used or never-mounted tubular tires, often from the same blokes who are selling their wheels.
--> often, these just didn't light a fire under the owner, or they were too messy, or the poor bloke lost hope in his tubular future.

1+2-Especially Campagnolo-compatible wheels. The sellers didn't see the light and can't wait to unload them. Well, here I am.

3-Ease of mounting; two words: tape.
--> If I can do it, anyone can. I mean that in a most self-deprecating way. My hands do not work well.

4-Ease of use: two words: sealant. I no longer carry a spare on less than metric centuries, I carry sealant and air. It's a diminishing risk.

5-Ride and handling quality for the price. Excellent 280-320 TPI tubulars are part of the wheel and the feel, and your bike wears them.
5-Ride and handling quality for the price. Cheap 60TPI tubulars last like iron and are not as dull-edged as similarly priced clinchers. Think Tufo.

6-The "I'm cool and you're not" factor. I'm still juvenile enough to be smug about it. Right up until I forget to unclip, and fall over.

7-Hipsters "give you ace cred, even in your lycra...like those gumwall glueskins are rad, old dude..."

8-Your wife will not attempt to buy you new tires, but will, instead, actually ask what to get. (small "victory" you take when you can)

9-No moochers for tubes and tires.

10-The really good ones ride like no clincher I've been on.
10-The really reasonable ones ride like iron. Take your pick.

11-I like a replaceable valve core. Just seems appropriate.

I've gotten my tubular wheelsets for excellent prices, lately, or so I tell myself:

Reynolds CVT Carbon, for Campy: He started at $1300 and ended at $400, including Vittoria Corsa Evo CX's mounted. His glue job on the front probably used a pint, and the shop's glue job on the rear was worse. Less than 100 miles on the wheels/tires. He "upgraded" his group from 10-sp Centaur to Ultegra, and couldn't figure out why the rear cassette make so much noise. I asked, and he threw in, the chain and cassette. It did take me about 4-6 hours to remove the tires from the wheels, remove the glue from the tires, remove the glue from the rims, and then re-mount them with tape. I bought a fiberglass wheel to grind off the glue, and $25 worth of tape. The 290TPI tires are silky smooth at 130psi and feel like part of the wheel. It was worth the 100-mile each way trip.

Bontrager Aeolus 6.5 (DT Swiss 340 hubs). Again, a significant drive, about 95 miles each way. I had two sets of wheels that would have been doing well to bring $500 each, and he had the Aeolus tubulars that were in need of new tires. That task alone, along with the ability to get two sets of wheels, motivated him to trade. I call the $1000 a bargain. The tires (Bontrager Race XXX Lite front, Continental Gatorskin Sprinter rear) were about 2/3 worn, but will make excellent spares. Tires came right off, new Tufo's went back on.

American Classic Carbon 650c. Again, these were a drive, 150 miles each way. I was notified by a guy in St Louis that they were in Richmond VA. $250 with Tufo S-3 Lite tires mounted, probably 200 miles on them, max. The seller complained "I can't give them away." They made a Kestrel AirFoil into a rocket with a simple swap.

HED Jet (tricolor hubs). On the web, pricey, $400, but deep carbon (fairings bonded to rims), came with Continental Sprinters glued on. You'll have to ask sloar about them now. I changed the tires out and ran them on a TT bike.

Matrix ISO-II (tricolor hubs). Local, on CL, came with orange Continental Sprinters glued on. With a wrecked RD and tubulars, the poor, pitiful Trek OCLV 5500 was a hard buy at $325 for the entire bike. I can't help but think the RD was not the price-killer, but the tubulars with orange tires were. No one wanted it. It belonged to a hipster's girlfriend, and I guess only he had an appreciation for it. The bike was redone and sold for $900 with SRAM Apex and Vuelta's. I'm not saying the wheelset ended up free, just sayin.... Ask mountaindave if they're any good. I sort of wish I had them back; with some Tufo 700x35 tubular cross tires, they'd be the bigfoot I'm looking for on my cross bike.

Numerous free tires, about 1/3 of them new. I'm not sure what people are thinking, but I hope they keep thinking it. I have the word out to all the riders around, Robbie has clincher wheels, so if they see a good deal on tubular wheels, or a bike with tubulars, thinks twice, there's always a set of clincher wheels here for the swappin'

I'm stalking a set of Vittoria Corsa Evo CX III's. New, in packaging. My goal is $80 for the pair. or roughly 60% off.

unworthy1

Oooh, aaahh...these are 2-color wire, now? Brass and Stainless Steel? NICE!
Everybody should buy a pair: defeat puncture vine (what some people refer to as "goatheads") and support rootboy (some people would say OUR very OWN rootboy)....just re-tweeting this public service announcement.
We are sort of lucky in that I have never seen puncture vine growing North of San Jose, and it's pretty rare there, too, but...what with climate change I'll expect to see it ranging farther North any day now.

rootboy 

Thanks, Unworthy1. You certainly ARE worthy, despite what they say about you.

Yes. I finally found some 1/16 " stainless wire I could bend! 308L alloy welding rod. VERY big thanks for Frank the Welder for suggesting it to me. (whatever happened to Frank?) The stainless rod from the hobby shop was just too hard. Aggravated my elbow tendonitis trying to bend that stuff. And I still can't get this welding rod to do those small mounting loops for the upper portion. Too hard. But, using stainless for the rub strips greatly increases the longevity.

On puncture vine. It is some way nasty stuff, as every bike rider knows. My sister, who works in native plants of the western US, says the noxious weed has increased its range about 50% in the last 50 years. Scary. And it can be very difficult to eradicate.
So far, it hasn't invaded the eastern US…yet.

rootboy 

That is some post, Robbie. Kudos!

"Tubasti pants". You crack me up.

Yep, had those before.

Homebrew01

I get a piece of scrap plastic bag or wrapper, fold it over the tip of my finger, to spread the glue.


- pre-stretch well at 120 psi for a day or 2
- reduce psi to 5 or so to make the tire round
- spread glue on base tape.
- spread glue on rim
- spread a bit more on base tape
- wait 10 minutes
- deflate tire
- mount at valve
- work tire around until mounted
- pump to 30 psi or so
- make it straight on the rim
- pump to 90
- total time 20 minutes
- ride next day.

noglider 

Not only on my jeans, I used to get it on the hair on the back of my hand. Dammit!

jeirvine 

For those using tape: Can it be used on rims that had previously been glued? Or do the rims need to be new, or completely cleaned of old glue residue? I have also heard it should only be used on Tufo tires, or other brands that have cotton un-treated tape. I just used Tufo tape on some Challenge P-R tires on some NOS rims. Went ridiculously easy. Wondering if I can use it on other wheelsets with glue residue.

noglider 

I hope residual glue isn't a problem. Let me put it this way. I bought some Tufo glue, and I plan to use it to attach a tire next time I need to. I do not plan to remove residual glue.

CV-6 

It is best (IME) for the rim to be clean. I could see where the tape might pull off the residual glue and leave you with an unglued tire. Not likely, but I err on the side of caution. I used Tufo on other brands without incident. I think they do not recommend doing that as they (Tufo) says the basetape could separate from the tire. My preference for tape is now Miyata. Cheaper than Tufo and works just as well.

RobbieTunes

I keep a couple of tubes of glue around, pristine, with no dents in them.
I just like looking at 'em.

RobbieTunes

I'd say it depends on how much residual glue. I've had some that were expertly mounted, and the residual glue on both the tire and rim was smooth, even, and not HEAVY. I taped right over it. I've had some where I couldn't abide the amount of glue on there. Remember, glue is easy to get off of a rim, but not so much a tire. Go from there.

For those that wonder about Tufo tape:

Back when I didn't know better, a certain BF member who will not be named sent me a pair of outstanding tubular wheels,
and a set of Tufo tubular clinchers, the C S33 Pro's. He implied they went together, but I can still imagine him laughing.
The "C" model Tufos are clinchers, and snap right on---to clincher wheels. He owns a few guns, so I shan't get even.

However, I was in Brainiac mode, and I taped the clinching tubulars (with a concave to flat bottom) to my new, awesome tubular wheels. I rode them a few times, including two centuries. My anal retentive eyes kept determining they "weren't quite centered," and I was more than a little miffed at that. I pulled them off in a hissy fit, and got a good look at "the problem," and then went on line and realized they were clinchers, and had no business being glued to a tubular rim, and I was pretty lucky, and DANG! that tape held good. The problem was me.

Knowing what I think I know now, I'd have kept the wheels, put the tires on something else, and bought some proper tires for the wheels, then built a bike around them.

noglider 

pastorbobnlnh 

Great thread and very timely in that I will soon begin my adventure with road tubulars on two sets of wheels I'm planning to ride this summer. Subscribing!

One question which was mentioned in the great liturture posted earlier: What about aging the tire? The importance of aging appears in all the older literature, but no one has mentioned it here. I once watched a short segment during the TdF and it was about L. Armstrong's chief mechanic. He mentioned storing dozens of tubulars in a cool dark place for months before mounting. Any thoughts?

And just to clarify, stretching on a 700c clincher rim works just as well as on a tubular rim?

Thanks!

A Tubular Newbie

rootboy 

That's a very good question about aging, Bob. I'm out of touch but, you don't see mention of it much any more. But yes, in general, I would think aging them is still a good idea. I was always under the impression that it is mostly to benefit the tread material. It becomes tougher as it ages.