anotherbrian

I've seen posts from people saying they initially seated their tires with a floor pump. That may have been on the tubeless-by-design rims like the new Dura-Ace and Ultegra wheelsets.

Stan's instructions have you use a tube the first time you mount the tubeless tire. I know part of that is to help the yellow tape form to the rim cavity, but assumed it was also to help the tubeless tire take its shape. There was no way I was going to get a tube into my initial mounting of my Hutchinson Intensive tire though, so I seated the yellow tape with a traditional tube/tire, and then mounted the Intensive later.

I couldn't get the Intensive to mount on the wheel using the compressor initially (partially might have been because I was using a small diam hose and not getting a lot of airflow), but I then wrapped a webbing strap around the circumference of the tire which caused the tire to get pushed more uniformly around the rim, and it finally seated.

I did the double century on the tubeless tires last week with no drama, so am pleased. In the coming week or two I'm going to try dismounting the tire and see if it is any easier than the initial install. I'm assuming that if I flatted on the road enough that Stan's didn't fix it, that I'd insert a tube to continue on, and would then re-seat the tire at home with the compressor. From what I've read though (and posts in this thread), it'd be reasonable to expect that you could patch and re-seat the tire on the road, though I don't know if that is with a hand pump or CO2.

If I were doing it again (and the ease of getting the tire off and back on the rim will dictate that), I might have a shop do the initial install just to save my fingers. If things work out well for the dismount/remount, I have a set of Velocity Aerohead wheels I'll probably tape up to try, and I'll be hopeful they're easier to mount than the DT465 rims I'm using now.