My fleet of bikes is expanding, and my miles are increasing. I currently cycle about 3000miles per year, but pretty soon, I'll be cycling multiple times that.
I love this cycling malarkey. The freedom, the fitness, the adventure. The only thing I really hate is the punctures. I know there are loads of ways around them, and I've always used marathon plus tyres as my preferred method for that, however, they don't grip well, the range of tyre sizes is pretty limited, and frankly the grip is crap! Of course that's quite subjective, but my opinion is based on my usage. Wet cobbles, I won't say more than that.
So my new commuter bike is a mountain bike. Its massive. It's got 3 inch wide tyres and 30mm rims! (Using both metric and imperial measurements still bugs me- why do we use both??? FFS) This new bike rides amazingly well on the 40mile canal commute into Manchester every day, but of course without marathon plus tyres, how am I to avoid punctures? Well I'm going to join the millions of sensible people converting to tubeless commuting. It's a no brainer these days. Most tyres are compatible. The fluid is cheap, the fitting is actually a lot easier then I expected, and it's kinda fit and forget, until of course you wear the tyre out, which I'm expecting to be about 3-6 months...
The method I tested out on my winter bike (Orange clockwork with Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pros) was to clean the rims using isopropanol rubbing alcohol, then tape them up using Gorilla tape - 2.5wide 'handy roll' is only a couple of quid in ASDA right now - making sure to pull it as tight as possible when applying. cut a little cross where the valve hole is. Fitting the tyre, making sure the bead is clean and undamaged. The odd nicks wont matter, I'm referring to gaping holes being a no no.. Make sure the rotation of the tyre is the right way round! If its a tight fit, try adding a bit of the sealant fluid to the rim and the tyre might slip into place a bit easier. For the valves I actually cut those off the old inner tubes. Just make sure to leave a base on the valve so it can grip to the inside of your rim. It is often cheaper to get new valves however, but if you've got any old inner tubes you don't want, then go for it. With the tyre in place, I tested the seal without any fluid in first. Using a rideair tyre inflator, which was going cheap on some online retail site, if it can actually get any pressure into the tyre then usually you're good to go. To add the fluid, I either added it via a little bottle through the valve if the core was removable, or prizing the tyre off the rim just a little using a couple of levers then pouring in the right amount of fluid - usually 60ml. Seal it up, then blast the air in. Spin the wheel vigorously to get that fluid all round the inside of the tyre.
My first wheel took me 1.5 hours to convert. I had to learn everything on the way. YouTube, blogs, forums and screaming at the wall. The second wheel took me 30 minutes...
