This is a bontrager tubeless 29" mtb rim, I'm trying to mount tube with Schwalbe fat frank wire bead on it. The wire bead keeps on digging into the inner groove. Should I give up because it just not doable? Or should I throw another rim strip on it?
by Dexter2700
6 Comments
Also I used plenty of soapy water as lubricant
Let it sit in the inner groove
Inflate a lil bit, massage the tyre around so it’s all seated evenly, inflate more, at some point in this it should seat on the rim properly.
Go 10 psi over the max printed tire pressure
Do you have Tubeless rimtape ? Tubeless tape is more slipery and has a better seal. The type that you just pull over the rim wont work because air and tubeless seallant will leak into the rim (most tubeless seallants have amonia wich will corode aloy rims and nipples).
This is a hookless rim, so relies on a very tight fit with a stretch resistant (but able to stretch a little so it fits snuggle onto the shelf) tubeless bead. They’re designed around running low pressure tubeless tires, I’m not sure a wire bead is inherently riskier than any other non tubeless tire, but given the slightly larger bead seat diameter/substantial bead shelf, a presumably not very stretchy wire bead, and the lower max pressure, there may be a threshold where the bead is just not going to stretch enough before the tire blows off.
My one concern would be a wire bead is being pushed more by pressure on the contact patch, since wire is stiffer in compression than kevlar/folding beads, so a load on one side will push the bead up more on the other. Since there is no hook holding it on, I think a wire bead is a little more prone to being pushed off the rim and blowing off due to how stiff the bead is.
I personally wouldn’t run anything but tubeless ready tires on those, (with or without tubes) below the max pressure stated for both the rim and the tire (the tire will sometimes have a separate max pressure for hookless, for road its 73.5 max even for 25mm i think, mountain often around 30 or 40) — while there are specific hookless compatible road tires, since mountain tires run lower pressures, unless specifically stated I think all mountain tubeless tires are also hookless compatible.
On a folding Schwalbe, I’ve had to “manually” set the bead with a tire lever bit by bit. It’s tricky because the bead will naturally want to walk itself back into the channel, but it worked!