Telkwa

Yeah, only took me 66 years...
Better late than never I suppose. My blind spot was thinking that I'd been doing this since I was a kid so there was nothing to improve upon.

Going back to the original reason for starting this thread. Getting the bead off the shoulder of the rim. I think that lots of soap & water, and pushing the tire away from the rim while working around and around until the bead lets go will do it next time. I don't think the sealant had much to do with the tire being stuck on the shoulder but I do think the hard plastic Bontrager rim strip contributed to the problem. Just a guess based on very little experience...

Lombard

This reminds me of a club ride I was on once. Someone was changing a flat and was having a hard time mounting the tire back on the rim. I went to help him, but just when I was handed the wheel, this other rider grabbed it out of my hand and said "I've been doing this for over 30 years". Well he struggled for about 10 minutes, then handed the wheel to me in frustration. I mounted the tire in less than a minute, handed it back to him and said "Mabe you need another 30 years". His expression was priceless.

To be clear, he had an older bike with older non-tubeless compatible wheels. Clearly he never had to deal with the bead in the channel trick.

Telkwa

Sick burn there, Lombard.

I did a little research (google) on the Bontrager rim strips. According to Trek website there are two different versions. White for carbon fiber rims, and black for everything else. When I bought the rim strips a coupla years ago the salesperson at the Trek store sold me the white ones. He made no mention of black version.

I'm guessing the white ones work in non-carbon fiber applications?

Anyway, Trek's website says you can't remove them and use them again and I see why. The two rim strips I pulled out of my wheels when I gave up on t/l are all wavy and deformed along the thin edges. It takes a lot of prying to get them back off the wheel and by the time I was done they were toast. So I'll experiment with the DT Swiss rim tape I bought.

If I decide to go back to the Bontrager rim strips I'll make sure to buy the black ones.

I found a couple of places to buy what appear to be aftermarket copies of the Bontrager strips but I'm not gonna take that chance.

Camilo

I have one of those bikehand tire lever type tools and haven't had any luck at all with it for getting a difficult tire off. Fortuntately, I also have two other wheelsets that, for whatever reason, aren't as difficult, even with the same tires.

Hmm, I'll have to look into the box of rarely used tools I have to see if I have one of those C-Clamp type vice grips. They might be just the ticket! Although, not for on-road flats.

The most difficult rim I have are 650B Raceface rims I originally put on my wife's gravel bike. At the time I had Boyd 700C rims on mine and they were much easier to get tires off of (same make and model of tire). So I bought a set of Boyd 650B rims to replace hers and sure enough, they're easier to work with by quite a bit (hand strength works). I am using the difficult 650B rims for my second set and will just deal with them. They do seem a bit easier with the tires I put on them for my bike. I've read that different tire/rim combos work better or worse than others. But to me this is worthless knowledge because who would experiment randomly with different tires just to discover the one that works with any particular rim?

Telkwa

Exactly. It's helpful on a theoretical basis to know that there are easy combinations of rim/tire and very hard combinations. But most of us are just rolling the dice.

So, after discussing things on this forum and watching several YouTube videos, I swapped my rear tire back to tubeless. 622X22 Bontrager Duster Elite rim and a Conti Protect Cross King tire that's been on the rim for a year but hasn't seen a lot of miles. DT Swiss 25mm tape and 44mm Muc-off valve stem. New bottle of Stan's sealant. Also used one of those FSA offset rim washers.

Some YouTube videos said to start taping near the rim weld, others say to start near the valve stem hole. I have no idea why some would say at the weld. I elected to overlap at the valve stem. Went around twice. I pulled the tape some, but #1 priority was to get the tape right down there in the rim channel. Air bubbles were easily squeezed out to the nearest spoke hole on the first round. Harder to avoid bubbles on the second round because the spoke holes were covered. I don't recall anyone mentioning that detail.

The Muc-off stems come with 3 different rubber feet. To me, the rectangular one fit best. The rectangular foot has a thin sleeve that's supposed to fill the space between the stem and the hole in the rim. Until I VERY CAREFULLY removed all the rim tape from the opening, the sleeve bunched up at the opening and the foot wouldn't settle properly into the channel. I used a pair of tweezers and medical scissors to trim out most of the excess tape, then a small chainsaw file to clean it up. As soon as the sleeve went into the hole instead of bunching I stopped. I like the Muc-off's because the bottom of the Muc-off is keyed for an Allen wrench. You can push downward on the valve stem while tightening the ring nut, and keep the valve from twisting.

I used all the tire removal/installation tools mentioned above to get the tire off and back on the rim. Extra care to keep the tire in the channel of course! I thought all the tools were useful, but the tire went on relatively easily so none of these tools were really put to the test. The big priority was to avoid damaging the rim tape with tire levers.

I have an air compressor. With the valve core removed, I used a rubber-tipped clean-out wand to fill the tire. BANG BANG and the tire was seated. Poured Stan's sealant in thru the valve stem, using a big syringe I'd bought at the feed store as a funnel. Installed the valve core, filled the tire back up, sloshed the sealant around for a day, went riding yesterday.

I'm feeling MUCH better about tubeless now that I've made most of the mistakes that can be made and worked through them. Thanks to everyone for their helpful suggestions.

Gresp15C

Just as an amusing aside, this patent shows that stubborn tires and clever gadgets for changing them are neither new nor unique to bikes:

https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US1122599.pdf

The tool confronts a problem that seems quite similar to modern tubeless-ready rims and tires.