I broke my favorite tire leaver. The aluminium ones broke my rim and my spirit. After 10 years of working on bikes on my own it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m going to a bike shop for a flat tyre that was caused by the aluminium tire leavers tomorrow.
by No_Armadillo7364
21 Comments
Any tips are welcome.
If you think that tire is hard, try something with downhill casing 😂
Make sure you popped the bead off the hook the whole way round first.
Push the valve stem up into the tyre.
Try adding some soapy water or talc to help it slide.
Hope this helps
Pedros make some pretty sturdy tire levers. They are about twice as wide as the ones shown.
I’ve found this video to be really helpful, especially his tip about repeatedly pinching the tire all the way around the rim both for removal and installation.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suh1-o6KBo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suh1-o6KBo8)
Maybe you never learned how to properly remove/install a tire?
The center channel is basic but essential.
For future I would never use an aluminum lever on an aluminum rim. There are other tricks to make it easier! I once zip-tied 3/4ths of the wheel, making sure the bead was in the valley of the rims when tightening the zip tie, made a huge difference!
Didn’t know you could have a favorite tire lever. I don’t have one.
I need one.
Judging by the photo, you only de-beaded that specific area. You need to de-bead the entire bead of the tire, and on both sides. You’ll find that this particular tire is not too difficult
This is entirely a technique issue.
There’s lots of good youtube videos, but the basic premise is always the same – use the center channel of the rim to create enough slack in the bead to pop it over the rim sidewall.
Hopefully you have a good relationship with your local mechanic, and they’ll show you how to do it in person. Odds are they can get tire on and off without any tools or with a single plastic tire lever.
(Tires have gotten tighter to allow for tubeless compatibility. Rims have similarly gotten larger to ensure a secure fit. 5+ years ago, when road/gravel tubeless was still fairly new, there were genuinely incompatible rim and tire combinations. This has largely been a non-issue for any rims and tires manufactured since around 2020, when standards stabilised. Basically all brands are compatible, and most combinations can be installed with bare hands and removed with one lever — *if you use proper technique*.)
Do they still make the Quik Stik? That thing makes removing a tire a breeze.
Cars are actually easier to work onIm convinced.
Pedros
Kool stop tyre bead jack. Makes it easy and also doesn’t mess up rim tape.
You want to hear my story? Oh, buckle up— I had the exact same headache: couldn’t pry the tire off my Reynolds ATR rim for the life of me. So, I hopped on my other bike, wheel in hand, and pedaled to the shop for a fast swap. On the way back disaster struck. The awkward imbalance from lugging that hefty wheel caused me to crash spectacularly—skinning my knee and elbow in the process. And to add insult to injury, I must’ve lost the rim’s end cap during the tumble. Now I can’t reinstall the wheel without ordering a replacement part for a whopping 40€, which I also couldn’t find on the internet without extensive search because Reynold spart parts are hard to get in Europe. God, what cosmic prank did I pull to deserve this chain of misfortunes?
Get some wraps, or zip ties, push down the opposite ends of the tire into the rim forcing the beads deep in the wheel well, tie them up to hold them down…. this will give you extra slack.
The opposite beads will be much easier to free now with the levers and once you get it going remove the wraps and do the rest.
Same method (in reverse) I gotta use to get my Marathon Plus’s on they are always tight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XUFVrl0UT4
This old video explains it nicely.
Skill issue.
Look up “tyreglider”, changed my life.
I just installed 2 brand new tires with just my bare hands. I start directly across from the valve, working the first bead on. As it gets harder and I’m closer to the valve, I go back to the bottom and make sure the bead is in the very center of the rim, working my way back towards the valve. With patience, I’m able to work the bead over the edge of the rim. I then flip the tire around, starting away from the valve once again, I work the second bead onto the rim, duplicating the effort to get both beads into the very center of the rim where it’s the lowest. I’m then able to patiently work the second final section of bead over the edge of the rim, not using any tools.
Never use metal tire levers. Ever.
Many newer tires and rims are “tubeless-ready” with a tight friction fit between the rim and the tire bead, so they make it much more difficult to change a tire, even if you are using a tube.
One above all advices to happily mount tires is: don’t buy Tubeless ready tire if you don’t want to make it tubeless (and actually a TPU tube is lighter and better than the tubeless sealant).
I struggled a lot and bent one rim to mount Continental GP5000 Tubeless ready, always pinching the inner tube until I sent them back to Amazon. Non tubeless version is so easy to mount that I didn’t even used levers!