To run tubeless on the road, you need specific tyres and for the best performance, rims too.
But because of the lower pressures needed for cyclocross, I've had real success converting
standard rims and tyres to tubeless. You just need electrical tape, a tubeless valve and
some sealant. And potentially a little bit of patience too, but I think the payoff is
absolutely worth it.
We'll go into tyre and rim choices later on, but I'm just going to be using my setup that
I used last winter and that I need to re-seal now for this winter. It's
just a Mavic Kysyrium wheel which has seen better days and a Ritchey Shield tyre, neither
of which have anything officially to do with tubeless.
Firstly, let's look at the premise. This tyre needs to become airtight on this rim. The
sealant takes care of a lot of it, but we need to create a tight seal between the tyre
and the rim to get us started, otherwise we'll be left pumping vigorously and nothing will
happen. Which is never a good thing, right?
We need to build up the rim bed using electrical tape. Each layer of tape slightly increases
the diameter of the rim, which makes the tyre sit slightly tighter. Some tyre-rim combinations
are always going to be too loose, but be patient and you can pretty much get most of them to
work. You can buy bespoke products like Stan's Rim Tape, but this is the ghetto version,
so standard electrical tape will work. As a secondary benefit, the electrical tape also
helps to seal the rim, making it airtight. Simply start taping, keep it tight but don't
stretch it and just push it into the well of the rim. Tape straight over the valve hole
- we'll deal with that later on.
Before you start, make sure you've got a full roll, otherwise you'll have to get another
one. That's only two layers to be fair, it's not like I've been there half an hour.
As you keep on going, you'll notice that the sidewalls of the rim start to look slightly
smaller and at some point we've then just got to just bite the bullet and see whether or not
we've created a tight enough rim bed. Take your tyre and just seat one side of it. You'll
know it's tight because you can just get it on using your fingers.
Next step - find the valve hole and very gently insert a pick through the electrical tape.
Make sure you get your tyre out of harm's way first. Just insert it very gently. Don't
enlarge the hole in any way, you just want the valve to sit really tightly through that
electrical tape. Just pop the valve in.
That's pretty tight.
Keep it quite loose on the rim. That's going to help us to seat the tyre later on.
Then start to put the second one on. Now we're at crunch time. If you've got valves with
removable cores, then you can pop all of the bead on. You really should have valves with
removable cores, it makes it much easier. Once all the bead is on, you can start to
inflate the tyre with the valve core removed and you can see whether it's sealed. If you haven't
got removable valve cores - we haven't this time - then we're going to insert sealant
into the tyre at this point.
What sealant you use is really important and does have a bearing on how well set up your
ghetto tubeless is going to be, so search around online for the best stuff. I'm actually
using stuff that my mate John made - genuinely!
Be generous here. You want to put at least 60ml in.
Then very carefully rotate the wheel through 180 degrees so that the liquid latex sealant
now sits down there in the sealed bit of tyre. Then try and get the rest of the bead on.
Right, tighten the valve down firmly. Give the wheel a good spin to make sure that the
sealant is spread evenly and then it's just a case of trying to pump it up.
What if it doesn't inflate? Firstly, how hard are you actually pumping? You've
got to give it some serious welly in order to try and get the tyre to seat. But if it's
still not working then you might have to go back to square one and start re-applying electrical
tape to build up that bed of the rim. There are however a couple of other things that
you can try and do first. Firstly apply soapy water to the bead of the tyre in the hope
that that creates a temporary seal that then means you can inflate the tyre. Secondly,
if you give the tyre a roll along the ground to try and coat the bead of the tyre in the
sealant as well.
Back to square one! Whatever you do, be really careful taking the tyre off because it's full
of sealant. If you're gentle, then you can probably keep the sealant in there so that
you don't waste any of it.
Just wipe all the sealant off the inside of the rim so that you can then re-apply more
electrical tape.
Now we've added the spaff.
Boo yah!
Right. It's going up, it's going up!
Make sure that you have a look and see that the bead is on the rim properly so it's not
going to blow off. You can see that there's air still coming out, but not that much, so just
inflate to about 50psi and then try and work out if you need to do any adjustments. I need to
screw the valve in a bit tighter, we're sealed.
Right. It's likely that this is still going to be leaking air a little bit, so to help
it seal I'm going to leave it completely horizontal - either leave the wheel resting over a bucket
or in this case, resting on a vice like that. That will allow all the sealant just to pool
on one side and hopefully get it to seal and then potentially we might need to re-inflate
it and then flip it over and it will do the same thing. But the latex will seal it now,
which is a massive, massive relief!
You can see air is still escaping but I'm pretty confident that that's going to stop
either now or if I re-inflate the tyre again.
Now, what if it's still not working for you? You can try inflating the tyre quicker. Take
it to a bike shop that's got an air compressor and use that. Or potentially a car garage
with the same thing, although you will need to take a valve converter if you do that and
also be really careful that you're not inflating it so fast that you blow the tyre off the
rim, which is really bad news.
Some tyre-rim combinations just aren't going to work, so what are we looking for in the
best equipment for going ghetto tubeless? Rims first - ironically, a tubeless-specific
rim isn't necessarily the answer, although those that have a different bead hook, like
Stan's, HED or American Classics, do tend to work better.
As for the tyres, Skinwall tyres aren't going to work as the sidewall is just too pourous.
It needs to be a rubber sidewall like this one. Otherwise, all you're looking for is
a tight fit on the rim and unfortunately you can't tell that when you're buying it in the
shop. That does lead me onto one last point which is that you've got to be really careful
if you're buying stuff specifically with the aim of going ghetto tubeless. It's far better
I think in this case to use old rims and old tyres and attempt to get them tubeless like
this. I had great fortune with these and they've worked brilliantly. Then I went out and bought
new rims and new tyres with the specific aim of going tubeless and it didn't work, which
annoyed me no end.
To recap: build up the bed of the rim to create a really tight seal between the tyre and the
rim, insert your tubeless valve into the rim, then put 60ml of the best sealant you can
find in there. Fingers crossed it will seal and then inflate it to 50psi to let it set.
This probably seems like quite a lot of faff, and it can be. However for cyclocross riding
- not racing - where punctures can be an almost daily occurrence, it's been an absolute godsend
and I can't recommend it enough.
Oh god, we've got spaff coming everywhere!
John's Tyre Spaff. Available in no good stores, anywhere!