Mountain Bike Tubeless Tyre Set Up 101 GMBN How To

Tubeless tires are a really great thing to have on a mountain bike and a great upgrade to do, but there are plenty of things to consider when setting your bike up tubeless. Here is the GMBN tech guide to everything you need to know about tubeless mountain bike tires. There are various things you're going to need to consider when setting your bike up tubeless. Let's start with the wheels. Firstly, you're going to need to decide what sort of rims you've got, or if you're going to buy some new rims, which ones to factor in and how to get them sealed ready for tubeless. Some wheels, like this particular set here, have a sealed rim bed. Just because of the design of the wheel, it's basically referred to as UST, that's Universal Serial Tubeless. It's a system developed by Mavic and it's a very good system for tubeless because you do not need to use any sort of rim tape to seal off that rim. It's already sealed. The only thing you need to factor in here is which type of valve you have to use on there. Most rims you see these days will use some sort of taping system. The reason for that is the rims are cheaper to manufacture like this. They're easier to repair like this in most circumstances because you've got easy access to the spoke and the nipple through that hole in the rim. You just have to decide how you're going to tape it. There are a bunch of official taping systems you can get in conversion kits or that come with wheels. This particular set of DT wheels comes with their own specific rim tape on there. That is ready made to set the bike up tubeless. You just simply put the valve in, put your tire on, fill it with sealant, and you're good to go. Just consider that. If you're going to tape this stuff yourself, you've got two options to do. You can do the official taping kit or you can do it the ghetto way. In the ghetto way, the best option we use is using a simple Gorilla Tape. What you need to do is run this around the rim and seal it. The other advantage of using Gorilla Tape is it's cheap as well, unlike the proper kits. Don't get me wrong, the proper kits are excellent and they work first time every time. There's a bit more of a hack to do the Gorilla Tape version. Sometimes you're going to get a tire that doesn't fit particularly well on that rim. With the Gorilla Tape, you can just do another run around the rim. You can make it a tighter fit, which means it's more likely to seal first time. Next up, you're going to need to select some decent quality valves that fit your rims correctly. If you're buying a tubeless conversion kit, the kit will come with tape, sealant and of course the valves. If you're just going to convert something yourself, whether you do it with the Gorilla Tape option or whatever other option you can use, you're going to need to select the correct ones to suit your rims. Now notice on these three valves I have in my hand, they're all slightly different shapes at the top. That's so they can fit different style profile rims. Take note of the profile of the inside of your rim and make sure that you select the appropriate valve. You want the best possible seal because valves can leak. If that happens, you will be able to get your bike set up tubeless, but it does mean that over time you're going to slightly lose some pressure from here. What you want is the valve area to be as clear as possible, A, for being able to seat your tires effectively, B, being able to change your air pressure. Next thing to factor in with your valves is to make sure that the valves you select have removable valve cores. Now the core, if I just use this little tool here, the core is the inside part of the valve, it's that piece there. The reason you want to be able to remove that is these do clog up from time to time, and if you've got one on your bike that's not removable, it's going to be really hard to make your whole valve system work efficiently all the time. The ones you can remove, it means you can remove this, you can declog the actual valve stem, and it means you can wash these and make sure they work properly. The other reason for using this system is you can put sealant directly into the valve stem, straight into the tire, without the need of interfering with the tire fit. Next up, you're going to need to select some sort of tire sealant. Now, the common options these days are the milkier coloured liquid ones. Now, the idea is that the air comes rushing into the tire through the slash, or whatever it is that's in the tire case, the particles in this fill that void, and then basically it starts bunging up as lumps of rubber and seals. This stuff's really good, and there's a whole bunch of different ones on the market. The originator was the Stan's No Tubes sealant. There's also Joe's No Flats, there's a Continental Revo, there's Orange Seal, there's a whole number out there, and they're all very good at what they do. Now, one thing is important to say about all tire sealants is you don't really want to be mixing and matching tire sealants together in one tire. Now, I'm sure there are combinations you can do, but what you don't want to do is mix something, let's say, for example, Stan's with Orange Seal, because apparently that can start curing that rubber. The process of that will start going off. You don't want to mess around with that. You don't want it to emulsify. You don't want it to separate or split or anything like that. Whatever tire sealant you're going to select, stick to one tire sealant per tire. When you're putting your sealant into a tire, regardless of if it's a new tire or an older tire, you want to make sure the inside of the tire is as clean as it can be. Now, this is one of Blake's old Dekaisers, and although it's been heavily used, it is clear enough to put sealant in there. What you're looking for is something that doesn't look like this. This tire, as you can see, has got remnants of old sealant all clogged up in there. You don't want that stuff floating around inside your tire. It's going to start clogging things up, and you don't really want that. Make sure that you scrub the inside of your tires. Just use a decent washing brush that you would use to wash your bike with. Some hot soapy water is what you need to get all that stuff out there. Let your tires dry, and then you're good to go. Next up is making sure you've got some quality tires. These days, most tires you get from Schwalbe or Maxxis and all those sort of brands, they're tubeless ready. Lucky for us, we're running Continental Tires. They're our brand sponsor here at GMBN. Their latest tires are especially good. The casing on them is fantastic for setting up tubeless. They seem to go up touch wood first time. They've certainly gone up first time every time I've put them on. I've got four tires on a bike at the moment. They've all been up, and I've not needed to use a compressor. We shall see in a minute when I inflate them. Making sure you've got a decent tubeless ready tire is really important, whatever brand you guys are going to use. A tire that's not completely tubeless ready won't really be sealed on the inside. You'll be relying on the sealant itself to seal in the air, as opposed to just sealing holes it makes in there. Whilst this does work really well, and that is the basis of the original conversion kits, it does mean that you're going to get some seepage through the sidewalls of the tire if it's not a completely sealed tire. Whilst this is okay because it will work, you're going to need to put a lot more sealant in there to get a good seal. It will take up to two or three days sometimes for it to stop seeping and make that correct seal on the inside. I wouldn't If you're in doubt about which ones to use, see what your friends use or see what other locals use in the conditions, and you'll find that's going to be a good basis to start. For inflating the tire itself, you're going to need some sort of pump. These days, setting up tubeless tires is mostly a lot easier than it used to be when there wasn't so many tubeless tires around, and you were just using a conversion kit to turn a non-tubeless tire into a tubeless one. That could become really messy and a real pain in the ass, but these days, you get these sort of pumps that have got a compressor-based chamber built onto them, and you can inflate this separately to inflate the tire, and then you can open the valve and let all of the air out in one hit, inflating that tire, much like using a compressor in a workshop. It's a really, really good system. Of course, you don't always need it. You might be one of the lucky ones that's got a good set of tires and a good rim combination that pops out straight away. Now, CO2 cartridges can be very helpful for seating tubeless tires, but you do have to be aware that on some sealants, I mean, Continental recommends you don't use CO2 with their sealant, and the same with Stans, but there are other ones that are safe for that. The reason they suggest you don't use it is it can prematurely start that sort of curing process on the inside of the tire and start forming large lumps of rubber in there, and if they're sort of forming those large lumps on the inside of the tire, you guessed it, it means there's less of those smaller particles which can seal up the holes, so it's not going to be as effective. Now, the next option is to use one of these little gizmos. Now, there's loads of different options available on the market, and it's basically a mini compressor that you inflate yourself. It's got a pressure gauge on there. It's got an air valve in the top, and you simply inflate it within the band it tells you to, then you attach it to your tire, and then hit the button, and it unloads all of that air straight back into your tire and inflates it. Something that's really good about these is they're really good to travel with as well because they're quite portable, so if you're on the road a lot, something like this might be really good for you. So now it's time to show you a couple of methods for inflating a tire. I'm going to show you the dry version, which I think is the better option of doing. Then I'm going to show you the traditional wet version where you pour the fluid straight into the tire, so you've got both bases covered because I'm sure some of you will try either option. The reason it's called a dry seal is you're not using tire sealant in there. It's actually a wet method because we're going to use some warm soapy water to help the tire sidewalls pop out. So for this method, you put the tire onto the rim, then you get some warm foamy soapy water and apply it to the sidewalls and the rims, and then you simply inflate it. It seats it. You'll hear that classic pop as the beads are seated into the actual hooks on the rims. Then when you remove the pump, the air is going to come rushing back out again because we're doing this with no valve core in there. But that's nothing to worry about because you're then going to put the sealant in afterwards, knowing that the tire is hopefully already sealed in place. So I'm just going to screw this onto the valve, and I'm simply just going to squirt that straight into the tire. So the last thing you need to do now is just put the valve core in before inflating the tire. Note that I don't need to do this with the valve core out because it's already seated, so the hard bit is done. So I'm just going to tighten the valve core up using the valve core removal tool. Now, this is an aftermarket valve core remover. These are well worth having. They're really easy to use, but quite often you'll see one of these in a packet with the valves. Now, this is a DT one, and this is a little valve core remover. They are really easy to lose or just throw away because you don't know what they are. Let me just demonstrate how these work. It just pops over the end of the valve, and same thing, it's like a little miniature spanner putting the core back on. So well worth keeping those things. So now it's just a case of pumping up the tire using your floor standing pump, or a track pump as they're often called. Put your preferred pressure in there. Personally, I like to inflate to about 40 psi, so that's 40 pounds, and leave it overnight before I ride just to make sure it's 100% sealed and doing its job correctly. So that is successfully set up using the dry method of inflating first to seat, then putting your sealant inside. Now, it's not always this easy. This is a good combination, the DT rim in this case, quite a wide one, 35 mil with a Mountain King Continental tire on there. That's a good combo by all accounts. So this has gone up, but quite often you'll find the tire, it will inflate, but it might lose some pressure overnight. Now, if you've got one of those sort of options, pump it up 40 or 50 psi, make sure you slosh the sealant around on the inside to coat both sides, and leave it on its side. I recommend using a bucket and just let it just rest, and the sealant will take care of any small holes or any parts that aren't sealed correctly. Might need to top up with some air, and then hopefully you're good to go. So having done the dry method where you inflate the tire first and seat it with no sealant in there, I'm going to show you the other method, and hopefully this goes to plan, but if not, you will see why this is a messier method to do. It's just a case of getting one half of the tire onto the rim, and then you want to be putting some sealant into the tire before you finish putting the tire onto the wheel completely. Make sure your sealant is really well shaken up so the particles are suspended within the fluid, and then pour in the amount that you need for your size tire, and then spin that around and then start getting the rest of the tire bead back in place. Now, this can be messy. You can see it's already starting to drip on the floor a little bit. It's horrible stuff because it dries and it's quite sticky. I'm going to get this seated, so this time I'm going to use the compressor chamber on the pump, so I have to inflate that first, and then I release all the air at once, and then, fingers crossed, it seals. If it doesn't, a lot of this stuff sprays everywhere. Okay, we ready? Three, two, one, and we got lucky. So this time it's gone perfectly according to plan, but it doesn't always happen like this, and as you can see, it's definitely a messier method. I've got to clean the tire. I've got to clean the floor as well. Okay, so there we go. We successfully set up tubeless tires with two different methods there. So we got lucky this particular time, but it's not always like that. So like I said to you in the early sections of the video, it's all about the fit of the tire on the wheel. You can get a slightly better fit by running another level of tape around it. That really does help, and doing a dry fit method really does help as well because you can be certain that something's going to work before you waste sealant and get the stuff everywhere. It's definitely the better way to do it. Now, tubeless tires are great. They work really well. They seal up thorns and stuff as you're riding, but what happens if you get more than that? What sort of punctures are going to stop you? So if you slash the tire carcass, there's a few different things you can do. If it's on the main part of the tire, you can use one of these little things. They're called tire plugs. Come from a motorbike and it's an all-terrain weld, and you basically load one of those onto this pronged fork. You ream out the hole, and then basically you stab it into place. However, that's not the full-time solution, and at some point, air will push that back out again. So what you can do then is do an actual tire repair job. But if you slash a tire sidewall, it's nearly impossible to actually fix the tire in a normal way. So there is a really good hack for this, and this is what I recommend doing. Take to the tire sidewall with a needle and thread. Get a really good, strong leather-based needle so you can get through the tire carcass, and a really strong thread. Stitch this tire back together, and then on the inside, I then patched it up using some, in fact, it was a tractor vulcanising patch in this particular case. They're heavy-duty rubber, and you've got to make sure that you sit this overnight so it's completely set and sealed. And then on the outside, I used a heavy-duty vulcanising glue, so this stuff's really tough and it's really flexible as well, so it makes a good seal over the top. Now, this tire will inflate tubeless again now, so it's not completely wasted. Of course, this isn't sort of the ideal situation, but you can fix a tire like this and get more use out of it. So don't think that by slashing your tire, you're going to completely bin the thing. You can still use those tires and save some money. Now, of course, on a trail situation, if you do that sort of thing, you need to keep riding. I do recommend that you carry an inner tube with you. So, of course, it's kind of a bit funny having to carry an inner tube when you've gone to the point of doing tubeless, but they're good old faithful and they will get you back on the trail again until you can get home and fix it properly. So you still get a second chance. So there you go. That is everything, really, about tubeless tires and setup that you guys need to know. So for a couple more useful tech videos, click down here for three ways to join a chain. Of course, the optimal way is using a split link, but there are other ways you can do this when you're out on a trail. Click down there for that video. Very useful, that one. And to find out everything about greases, much in the same vein as this video, all about greases, lubricants, compounds, anti-seize, all that sort of stuff. Click down there. It tells you exactly where you need to be using that stuff on a bike if you even need to own that stuff. As always, click on the round globe to subscribe. We've got new content for you every single week. Share it around. Tell all your friends about us. And if you like the video or found it helpful, give us a thumbs up.