The trials and tribulations of tubeless tyres... again.

Well, I had today all planned out. A nice chill in the house followed by a test of my new Wahoo Elemnt Bolt v2 GPS bike computer in the afternoon. How wrong I was. I went to check the bike and found the front tyre completely flat, oh joy 😕. After my initial set up of the new tyres, I had doubts at the back of my mind and luckily ordered a roll of tubeless rim tape from Hunt as a spare so I decided to change the rim tape. Probably because it had been seated for a while, the tyre came off pretty easily with one lever so I took the wheel into the back yard and blasted all the sealant out of the tyre and off the rim with the hosepipe and left them to dry for a bit. I then removed the two wraps of Muc-Off rim tape and attacked the sticky residue the tape left with a microfibre and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. I soon gave up on this because the residue was extremely persistent.

I decided to do two wraps of the Hunt tape but this time, every time I had stretched six or seven inches of tape onto the rim bed, I massaged the tape into the dip in the centre of the rim bed with a length of 13 mm chromed steel bar I had (I have another if anyone wants it for the cost of postage?). To make sure the tape was seated, I also jammed a wadded up handful of t-shirt into the side of the rim bed behind the hook on each side of the rim and squished it all the way around to make sure the two edges of the tape either side of the central depression were stuck down properly. I then poked a hole in the tape at the valve hole and fitted the valve with some sealant smeared around the rubber cone. The tyre went back on pretty easily and I soon had it seated with my Airshot device. I opened the second bottle of sealant that came with the Muc-Off kit and squeezed half of it into the wheel. I inflated it to 60 PSI and gave the wheel a mad jiggle in every possible direction to disperse the sealant and attached it back to the bike. It's only been half an hour but, touch wood, the tyre still feels rock hard. Hopefully it will still be hard in the morning. Or possibly not 🤷.