The Fonda sidewalls seemed to be predisposed to angle inwards(with no air in them)….which made seating
the beads with a blast of air nearly impossible. Firestone Weathergrips(car tires) are the same way….my tire techs sometimes have to use a cheetah to seat them. And needing a cheetah to mount a passenger car tire is rare.

I used a tire lever to try and get the beads as close to the rim as possible before attempting inflation. If I seated the beads and too much air got out before the presta valve was put in…..one(or both) beads would release after about 5-10 seconds.

I'm confused by the bolded part. Why are you trying to inflate the tires without the valves in the stems?

i used air compressor to put air in the stem(with presta valve out). After beads are seated…I pull the air nozzle off and quickly put finger over the hole….take finger off then quickly put the presta valve back in

In your biased opinion. As much as I think TL is the way to go for mountain bikes I hate it for the road.

I still don't understand why you would take the valves out at that step. Leave them in and you eliminate the issue that seems to be causing you the most problems.

Why?

Maybe. But typically leaving the presta in…wouldn’t allow air to get in fast enough to seat the beads. I never attempted to try it with the presta in, but based on how much trouble I had with it out…..I’m not sure it would’ve worked

Try it.

If I’m unfortunate enough to need to seat the beads again… I’ll give it a try.

I have to remove the valves on at least 50% of the TL tires I install at the shop...and we have a BIG compressor.
I don't like high pressure and don't over-inflate my clincher tires.
It's a mess when you inevitably do flat.
Most of the TL tires don't have the ride quality of a nice clincher.
They're heavier but I don't even really care about the weight.
I like being able to inflate my tires w/o needing a compressor.

For clarity, it’s most widely considered the stem and the core which comprise the valve; you’re removing the core to inflate, which I also think is bad practice.

As I mentioned, I’ve got five pairs of road ubeless right now, and I first went road tubeless in ‘14. In that time, I’ve had myriad struggles and issues with various wheels and tires, but I’ve never had an issue that needed resolved by removing the valve core.

I used to pull the core to add sealant after seating the tire, but now just break a section of bead and pour it in, saving the hassle of trying to get good sealant with lots of puncture-clogging particulates through tiny holes. Way easier...but I also have an electric air compressor, so inflation is not an issue I have to deal with. If you can, I strongly suggest getting one, unless you’re trying to get your arm workout in at the same time you’re changing tires.

This video pretty much sums up my thoughts on tubeless tire so far. Def going to keep running them for the foreseeable future to give them an honest try…..but I def can see myself going back to tubes.

Same here. I like tubeless on mountain bikes, tolerate tubeless on gravel bikes, and hate tubeless on road bikes.

I'm glad to read that you had a good experience with Giant tires. On my end, I've had 1 Defy and 2 TCRs with TL setups so far and all 6 tires were really hard to seat on rims, even with an air compressor.

I don't know if you'd want to use propane to blow them up on the rim like I do my wheel barrow tire, but you could wrap a strap or cord around the circumference of the tire and squeeze it with the cord. That works for wheel barrow tires and other tires to spread the beads to the bead seat.

Just not as much fun as propane and fire...... kids, don't do this!

My first set of road tubeless tires were Gavia... SLR, I think? Their best at the time, anyway, and about $100 each. They were a really nice tire other than the fact that they were tight as all hell - still the tightest bead lock that I've ever experienced. They were locked so tight on my wheels that, as my frustration mounted, I was tempted to cut them off, even though they had thousands of miles left on the tread. I took a breather, though, and eventually stumbled on a bead-breaking technique that worked and hasn't failed me since.

The kids use gasoline.

I'm a big fan, but several new tools are good to have.

A tubeless pump with an air chamber and I found a set of plastic clips (sold as part of Vittoria's tubeless kit) to hold the bead in place while you wrangle on the tire make even GP5000s fairly quick to put on.

I've also started using Vittoria airliners which are foam-ish inserts which make it possible to just ride on even if it really flats, so I don't even bother carrying a spare tube or whatnot.

I'm still using tubes on the road bike though have used tubeless and loved the ride feel. I'm probably going back to tubeless soon...mostly for the safety factor on fast downhills here and also for that supple ride feel. Tubeless still is best at lower pressures. On the MTB, I have been tubeless since around 2005. Gravel is all tubeless. It would be pretty dumb to use tubes here. You just need to learn how to do tubeless...there is technique involved and it is often more difficult to set up than gravel or MTB.

Interesting. I don't MTB, but I do road and gravel tubeless at various pressures, and never have associated setup difficulty with either discipline or pressure. Why do you think discipline is a relevant factor to setup ease?

For example, I run two pairs of AC Argent road wheels with +100psi pressures, most often 23c Schwalbe One of various generations, but also 23c Hutchinson Fusion5 Galactik. They are far-and-away the easiest of my 5 tubeless wheelsets to set up. The most difficult, to the point of surrender, have been lower pressure WTB i23 650b x 48c at 50psi and 700c Spinergy GX at 70psi with 35c rubber. The tires in both most difficult cases are Rene Herse models, on standard and one extralight casing.

From what I understand, setup issues are more to do with equipment design than discipline, though some of the issues I can see being related to discipline, of course. Take a tubeless tire casing which is not airtight, for example, and relies on sealant to retain air pressure. I can well imagine that low pressure applications might stress the sealant less than high pressure, allowing, perhaps, for a thinner layer of sealant to be effective.

Again, that's hypothetical and not my experience, so I'm curious to know what you see as the discipline-specific factors to ease of setup.

Since road tubeless is still relatively new compared to the others (especially MTB) I think maybe tire diameters, rim beads, and rim profiles are still being optimized on the road side of things. It is possible that causes some combos to be especially hard to get on and off. Some of the early ones were just hell, and I see that those same manufacturers have changed rim profiles to help not only mount tires better but also retain the bead better without locking it in.

To be fair I never had to re-seat my Giant Gavias. So never had to face that test! The Pirelli tyres were hard work to seat on the SLR rims though. Had to blast them with my boost pump half a dozen times before they eventually popped on. Plain sailing since.

Mountain biking tubed is dumb.
Gravel riding tubed is not advised.
Road riding tubed is fine.

I spent the first 30 years riding mtn bikes with tubes. It wasn't dumb then. It is now. Tubeless really is a huge advantage for mountain bikes and gravel bikes. If you don't think you need to go tubeless on the gravel, you're probably riding places you could ride a road bike.

For road bikes... yeah, that goes both ways. I ride tubed and tubeless road bikes. I don't get many (jinx in 3... 2... ) flats with the tubed bikes. I went tubeless because of a set of wheels that are brutally hard to mount any tire. I've grown to like the tubeless road setup. Yes it's more of a hassle. Yes, you're much less likely to flat.

A compressor usually works fine (yes, removing the valve core) for road tires. For mtb tires, I use a magic inflator (Bontrager Flash Charger). If you're struggling to seat the tires, try one of the inflator/pumps made for the task. They really are effective.

I've had good success with road tubeless, 2 sets of different tires on 2 different rims, 3 out of 4 seated with a floor pump, last took a blast of CO2 that is considerably cheaper than buying a compressor or chambered floor pump. 0 flats reriding the same routes I've flatted with tubed tires, riding several miles of gravel as well. I'm not going backwards to tubes.

That's what I eventually did. Definitely worth the investment if committed to going tubeless and you don't have a compressor.