Steve Vai
Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
After dicking around with a few other methods of setting up fat tubeless, I think I've finally come up with something that works without any hokieness.
I've set up a few wheels using the normal split-tube "ghetto tubeless". While it does seem to hold after fighting with it, screwing around with straps, and covering your friends with Stans, it just doesn't seem sturdy enough for me to run it on my own bike. I also found it interesting that no one I talked to at Frozen Fat was using this method either, I heard story after story of people pulling the tires off the rim.
Most were just straight up building up the channel in the rim using Gorilla tape and throwing a valve into it and that's it. I tried doing this and ended up using an entire roll of tape before I got the channel high enough to seal against the tire.
So I went with a hybrid version using the foam method and tape. Here's how it goes...
Put in the normal Surly rim strip. As an FYI, I run the next bigger strip in the narrower rim. As in this is a Clown Show strip in a Darryl. The Clown Shoe strip is 75mm and goes right up to the edge giving much better coverage of the holes. Anywhoo.
This is some quasi dense 1/8" thick, 2" wide insulating poop for plumbing. It's also sticky on one side so it won't move around. It comes in like 15 foot rolls for like $5. 1 roll is enough to do one wheel. Starting at the seam I went around 2 times which brought the level of the channel almost to the bead height.
Next I went around on each side with 2" wide Gorilla Tape the same way I would use Stans Yellow tape. I made sure to stay tight against the bead and keep the tape smooth. This step might take a time or 3 to get right.
Poke a hole through the tape and insulation to put the valve in. This a standard 44mm Stans valve.
Tire install is exactly like any other mountain bike tire. Put one side on, fill with Stans, put the other side on and fill with air. I got this to seat using a handpump, that's how good the fit is!!
Zero Stans leakage, tire hasn't lost any air since I mounted it, even with a beat to hell Escalator. So try it out. If you don't want to try it, drop it off to me and I'll set it all up for you. I can drill your rims while it's here as well...
-Jim.
I've set up a few wheels using the normal split-tube "ghetto tubeless". While it does seem to hold after fighting with it, screwing around with straps, and covering your friends with Stans, it just doesn't seem sturdy enough for me to run it on my own bike. I also found it interesting that no one I talked to at Frozen Fat was using this method either, I heard story after story of people pulling the tires off the rim.
Most were just straight up building up the channel in the rim using Gorilla tape and throwing a valve into it and that's it. I tried doing this and ended up using an entire roll of tape before I got the channel high enough to seal against the tire.
So I went with a hybrid version using the foam method and tape. Here's how it goes...
Put in the normal Surly rim strip. As an FYI, I run the next bigger strip in the narrower rim. As in this is a Clown Show strip in a Darryl. The Clown Shoe strip is 75mm and goes right up to the edge giving much better coverage of the holes. Anywhoo.
This is some quasi dense 1/8" thick, 2" wide insulating poop for plumbing. It's also sticky on one side so it won't move around. It comes in like 15 foot rolls for like $5. 1 roll is enough to do one wheel. Starting at the seam I went around 2 times which brought the level of the channel almost to the bead height.
Next I went around on each side with 2" wide Gorilla Tape the same way I would use Stans Yellow tape. I made sure to stay tight against the bead and keep the tape smooth. This step might take a time or 3 to get right.
Poke a hole through the tape and insulation to put the valve in. This a standard 44mm Stans valve.
Tire install is exactly like any other mountain bike tire. Put one side on, fill with Stans, put the other side on and fill with air. I got this to seat using a handpump, that's how good the fit is!!
Zero Stans leakage, tire hasn't lost any air since I mounted it, even with a beat to hell Escalator. So try it out. If you don't want to try it, drop it off to me and I'll set it all up for you. I can drill your rims while it's here as well...
-Jim.
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