Micheal Blue

Reading how some people have a hard time removing these tires, I'd like to share the way I use and which makes it easy. I use two plastic tire levers and five or six pieces of ropes (each not even a foot long). Of course, first I deflate the tire as much as possible. Then I squeeze the sidewalls and push the tire against the rim, and use one of the pieces of rope to hold the squeezed tire as close to the rim as possible. This I repeat in regular intervals along the rim until I run out of the pieces of rope. Again, the rope is there to prevent the tire from returning to its natural shape; it's there to hold the tire as close to the rim as possible. As you can see in the attached photo, this has already created a gap between the tire and the rim at the top. Some rims, like Dahon's Kinetix Comp are tougher to deal with due to their shape. In that case I keep on squeezing the sidewalls (to force them into the deeper middle part of the rim) from the center string to where the tire lever is, on both sides. Eventually, this creates enough of a gap at the top for the tire lever to easily slide the tire off the rim. No more swearing and sweating .