To Glue or… stay tubeless
part 1
(Tires and wheels I glued in this story!)
A shade tree Bike Mechanics account
of gluing tires.
*Disclaimer
I don’t really talk about tubeless tires in this 1st round, so don’t
read the title and expect it.
A
little back history on me, I have been biking a little bit here or there for
most of my life. But it wasn’t
until Oct 2010 that I really started biking and racing. In the past 3 years of biking I’ve
amassed Two mountain bikes, (One basic race worthy, and one that I build up
from scratch, super light), Two cross bikes (One basic race worthy, and one
which is of the utmost quality, and custom made by a master builder and friend,
Todd Gardner of Stoemper), and lastly a TT bike which I build up from scratch
(mostly from my eBay sponsor).
Needless to say, I’m no expert, but I’ve done most things once or twice.
I do all my riding in one way or another to be better for cross, and am of the
guise that you shouldn’t have a road bike and a cross bike, when you can just
spend twice as much on your cross bike and use it for road as well.
Last
year I wanted to know what everyone was gafawing about with there tubular cross
tires, so about half way through the cross season I was able to acquired some
bottom of the line box tubulars (off EBay for $45 buck including
shipping). I also bought a pair of
Vitoria cross evo XMs for another $45 bucks, pre glued (base coated), never
mounted.
So
I got my wheels, which had a nice thick layer of glue on them. The glue was who know how old, or
brand, and cracked and patchy… I spent the better part of a 4 hrs removing it
with a combination of a butter knife, acetone, and steal wool… luckily for me I can focus pretty well
and just power through long projects like that. Anyway the tires were pre stretched, and were easy to slip
on and off the wheels already, so that was a step I was able to skip. Now Vittorias are true sew ups, so they
have a ridge running down the center of the base tape, which at the time I
thought was just due to the channel you find in some tubular rims, like the
only ones I had done before this. I was wrong.
I
also have a set of Sl-k light tubulars, which I glued some basic Tufo tires to
for TT racing. Since this was my 1st
time gluing, I had talked to a couple of bike shops, and watched some YouTube
videos on the subject before I glued them. Lets just say if you do it the way they say, it takes forever… 3 coats of glue on each tire with 12-24
hrs in-between to dry, and 3 coats of glue on the rims. Yes I did all the steps, and painted
the glue on like I was touching up a Picasso painting, making sure not to get any
in the spoke holes or over the edge of the rim. With all the other stuff going on in my life, it ended up
taking just over a week start to finish, and about 5 hrs of mind numbing work, it
took forever, and I didn’t even have to strip the wheels before hand. They set up great, and I have raced on
them 2 seasons now, which is all I will do without re-gluing them.
(SL-K tubulars I glued pluss the Stoemper awesome bike)
Back
to how not to do it. So I had
talked to a couple of bike shops, and I was told by a reputable source that all
you need to do is put a pretty heavy glue layer on both wheel and tire, press
together and go. Sooo after last
time taking forever to do it, I jumped at the chance to do a quick fix. While this method may work for some
people it did not work for me. It
seemed just fine at first. I glued, put it together and set it to dry. Well that pre glued hardened ridge I
was talking about was pretty well set, instead of conforming to the u shape of
the rim, the tire wanted to stay in a v shape… so the edges of the base tape
kept pulling away from the rim. I
was frustrated, and didn’t trust the gluing, but didn’t want to take the time
to re glue… so I just got pissed,
and never really road on them on anything more than a gravel path, let alone
raced them.
Now
to present day, my frustration gone, and a new excitement in its place, over
new tires I got for race season. I was ready to try again. I bought a Tufo Prestige, mid size knobbies,
known for its great anti flat capabilities, for the front, and in the back, a Grifo
xs file tread (both on eBay for less than %50 of msrp) for my dry early season
cross races. The Tufo because it
was really cheep, and will get the job done, and the Grifo, because the reviews
say its one of the best dry season tires.
I too easily, pulled the Vittorias
of my rims, and preceded to remove the glue, I read on line that a hair dryer
can heat the glue, making it easier to remove, so I spent a good hr on the 1st
rim getting the big chunks off, I would say that the heat made it about %5
easier… It sucks cleaning a rim… I tried poring acetone on it to sped up the
process, but that only sped it up a little bit, maybe another %5. So I got
pissed and looked around the house for a steal brush or something to make the
process go faster, and came up empty.
Annoyed and frustrated I just left the rim out in the sun a quarter of
the way completed. I came to the conclusion
that gluing tubulars may not be the thing for me. I had an epiphany.
Goo Gone. A simple little
product I had used to get baked on tuck tape off my car when I had a patched window. I thought maybe the Goo Gone might get
inside the spoke holes, and melt the new glue after I put on the new tires, but
if I couldn’t find a quicker way to get the old glue off these rims, they were
just going to go on EBay anyways…
so on went the Goo Gone.
Nothing really seemed to happen at first, but after a few minutes, where
the remover was pooled up the glue was getting really soft. So I coated the rim in it, and waited a
couple minutes. I pretty much just
took a dry cloth, and rubbed a spot on the rim until it stuck, at which point I
would douse a corner of the cloth, and rub some more. I would say that it took me about 30-40 minutes to finish
the rim using my butter knife for a sec here or there to scrape off a big
piece. I then scrubbed the rim
with dish soap, and water, for oil removing abilities.
Now I had the Tufo, but the Grifo
was on back order, so I didn’t strip the back wheel yet. It was hard to get the Tufo on the rim,
so I spent a couple days with it on the rim at a very high psi 100 to be exact,
it says don’t go above 60, but I figured that my weight on a 60 psi tire
wouldn’t be any worse than the tire at 100 psi and no weight. Anyways, the tire stretched, a little…
but enough I guess. I was chomping
at the bit to start the process of gluing, and I had read that you can continue
to stretch a tire with “dry” glue on it on a rim that is clean, sooo I cleaned
the rear wheel maybe 40 min including the soap and water wash. If a have a great race season on these,
and decide that tubulars are the only way to go for me, I will get an old
beater tubular rim with no hub to have tires stretching on. Anyway, I put a coat of glue on both
rim and tire, waited for them to dry, then put the tire on the clean rear wheel
to continue to stretch. As you
might have ascertained, I decided to go with the old school, 3 coats, with dry
time in between. A couple more
coats a couple more days, and I was ready to mount. It was relatively easy, just like they show in the
instructional videos. Even with a
stretch of about 90hrs, the Tufo was pretty tight, and evening out the base
tape was harder than I wanted it to be, but not too bad. I rolled it deflated on a broom handle
a few times to make sure the middle was sticking, then I pumped it to 20 psi,
and it has been drying eve since.
The Grifo finally came in, and I
was amazed at how nice it felt. I
have seen and heard the word supple thrown around in pretty much every sentence
that tubular tires and riding have been in. This was the 1st time I really understood what
they meant. They really feel like
exactly what they are, a medium weight tube surrounded by a couple layers of
cotton. Not to throw a curve ball
in the write up, but you could pretty much fall asleep on a pile of these with
there base tape up, and be quite comfortable. I did notice that these too had the ridge in the middle that
I now know it where the casing is sewn together. I was worried about getting the same affect that I got with
the Vittorias, and the v shaped peg in the u shaped hole, but after I pumped
the tire up and the base tape pulled to one side, the ridge was no longer visible. In case you haven’t pumped up a tubular
tire without the rim, they look like a snake that’s trying to play dead, the
belly, base tape pulls from the middle to one side ore the other, which make
for easy glue application.
Anyways, the Grifo was tight on the rim as well, but supple, and easy to
stretch on, so I only stretched it on the rim for about 48 hrs before I started
the gluing. Same steps as I did
with the Tufo, but after the 1st round of glue, I read the
instructions in the Conti glue box, and found that they only recommend 3 hrs
drying time between the layers, so I was able to knock this one out in a day,
which I had off of work.
I’m excited for my 1st
race on these tires, although I am afraid of flatting one of these, especially
the Grifo, I really loved my Ghetto tubeless set up I ran the last two years,
and how they are bomb proof, so it will take something pretty big to make me
switch for good. If I love them I
will probably strip my Sl-k’s and put mudd tires on them for the later part of
the season, if I don’t I’ll be riding my PDX’s ghetto tubeless. So hears to the local twilight races, a
place to figure out the right equipment pairings for when you go into the
crusades. I don’t know if it was
just that I had already done it before or that I was setting these up way
before I needed them, but I felt much better about my 3rd attempt at
gluing, than I did at either of the 1st two.
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