Thread: Changing a Tire
View Single Post
Old 02-20-12, 05:05 PM
  #17  
conspiratemus1
Used to be Conspiratemus
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Hamilton ON Canada
Posts: 1,512
Mentioned: 4 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 297 Post(s)
Liked 245 Times in 163 Posts
I find pushing/rolling the second bead on with the heels of both hands works better on tough tires than just pushing with my thumbs. Leave your leather-palmed cycling gloves on for extra grip. First, be sure to go around the tire, pinching the installed sections of the beads together to get them to drop into the valley, and contrive to hold them there as you scrub around to the uninstalled part. You want to get as much slack as you possibly can in the last bit. Grasp that last unmounted section of tire with your fingers curling over the tread, brace the wheel against your thighs, heels of your hands against the bead. Take a deep breath. Then flex your wrists hard to push and roll with all your might. Usually it snaps over.

If that fails, use another tire is the best advice. However sometimes they can be re-mounted (after a flat) more easily than the first time, so if I really want to get that sucker on, I'll smear a little dish detergent between the bead and the rim. Then get a plastic tire lever with a long enough shank that you can grab it in your fist as if it were an ice pick. Now turn the wheel so it's end-on, coming at you with the unmounted bead at the top to the right, and hug it to your chest with your left arm. With the tire lever held vertically in your right first, stick it into the space between bead and rim at a point where the bead is already mounted. Then with the lever perfectly vertical -- don't lever it at all, draw it firmly toward you, bearing against the lubricated unmounted bead. The lever will "plough" the bead up and over the lip of the rim and never come close to the tube. It takes a lot of force and the lever will tend to jump out of the rim if your pull isn't perfectly true but it works.
conspiratemus1 is offline