Sito

Hi there
I have a pair of Strike SLG TLR wheels (that came with a new bike) and find it extremely difficult to get a tire seated after mounting it. I have tried several standard clincher tires (with inner tube) and it's pretty much the same with all of them.

When I am at home I have to inflate them to 10bar or more and then wait a while until the tire finally seats itself properly. Then I deflate to a more appropriate pressure.Out on the road there is obviously no way I get that much pressure into a tire which means after a puncture I either have to ride with the vibrations of a tire that is not seated properly or make my way home by some other means of transportation.

Combined with the fact that I find it very difficult to mount a tire in the first place, in my mind these wheels are pretty much unusable for general non-race use. Am I missing some trick? Is there an obvious way to get a tire seated on these rims with a normal mini or frame pump? Or are these just the 'benefits' of having tubeless-ready rims?

I wish manufacturers would go back to non-tubeless models or at least give you the choice between two versions for their new models...

bgdoyle

Are you putting something slippery to help seating. Some tire companies have install lube, but dish soap and water works well. I noticed a real difference.

Sito

I am mainly talking about road-side mounting here. I should try dish-lube at home but I usually get it to work there (with a lot of sweat and swearing) but the real problem is out on the road where you don't usually carry dish-soap or similar.

bgdoyle

It looks to like at least schwalbe as some lube that is in a small tube. That what i gatherd from the pictures of their install.

Sito

Thanks, I will check it out ! But to be honest, I don't think it is worth the hassle. When I am riding with the bunch on weekends I need to be able to change a tire quickly, otherwise I make myself very unpopular It's a 5min job with every other wheel I have used but with the Reynolds you never know if you can even continue the ride....if there is no fairly easy solution to this I think I'll just sell the wheels.

Sito

Ok, just had a very interesting call from the Reynolds tech support (in Germany) who I had contacted. They basically admit it is super-difficult to get the tire on. They say you definitely need a CO2 inflator and should use some sort of mounting fluid when mounting the first time. So forget about road-side mounting with a mini-pump.

They pretty much confirmed what I thought was the case: he says if we don't offer these wheels tubeless-ready the press and media will complain and we'll get negative reviews. Great stuff, I assume the vast majority of people still use these wheels with a normal clincher tires..but that's now much harder than it used to be...so much for progress

I am now very seriously considering about selling these and get something that is at least a little bit easier. I have another set of TLR carbon wheels and while tires are more difficult to mount on those than on non-TLR wheels it is still much easier than on the Reynolds.

dsbrantjr

I won't ride a wheel/tire combo that I cannot easily mount by hand, for exactly the reasons you state.