Cycling UK Forum

I brought a new bike fitted with Donnelly Strada 700x28c's, standard road clinchers with stiff sidewaIls and metal beads. I noticed a slow puncher and decided to replace the inner tube, thankfully at home. The tyre does not advertise inner tube ready but it has very stiff sidewalls, and tight bead fittings in what is a relatively deep rims. While you may expect a new tyre to be stiff, this caused problems I have not had before, my standard levers where not fit for the job. I've had it off and remounted twice and still causing as much problems.

Any suggestions please.

To remove (or replace) tyres, you need to hold the tyre bead in the well of the rim most of the circumference....its this which gives the slack to get the first (or last) bit of bead over the rim. If necessary, tie the tyre into the rim with string, toestraps, or whatever comes to hand.
On you tube is a video of me fitting a tyre, https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=-XUFVrl0UT4

Another tip which I discovered myself...

When you've loosened the tyre by moving most of bead into centre and you're taking off the bead, using metal levers, when you lever off the bead continue the lift off right through, i.e. push the lever not only downwards but continue the push until its shaft is beneath the wheel rim. This takes off more bead and simply makes it MUCH easier to remove.

531colin wrote:To remove (or replace) tyres, you need to hold the tyre bead in the well of the rim most of the circumference....its this which gives the slack to get the first (or last) bit of bead over the rim. If necessary, tie the tyre into the rim with string, toestraps, or whatever comes to hand.
On you tube is a video of me fitting a tyre, https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=-XUFVrl0UT4

+1 on this advice. Watch the video and repeat the pinching, going round and round the rim, ad nauseum. The tyre will pop off with levers and even pop on without.
Can’t tell you how many seasoned club mates I’ve impressed on the road by using this method. None of them could believe how many time you have to go around the rim sometimes.

fausto99 wrote:

531colin wrote:To remove (or replace) tyres, you need to hold the tyre bead in the well of the rim most of the circumference....its this which gives the slack to get the first (or last) bit of bead over the rim. If necessary, tie the tyre into the rim with string, toestraps, or whatever comes to hand.
On you tube is a video of me fitting a tyre, https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=-XUFVrl0UT4

+1 on this advice. Watch the video and repeat the pinching, going round and round the rim, ad nauseum. The tyre will pop off with levers and even pop on without.
Can’t tell you how many seasoned club mates I’ve impressed on the road by using this method. None of them could believe how many time you have to go around the rim sometimes.

I continue to be amazed how many intelligent, experienced cyclists can't work this out for themselves.
The tyre bead doesn't stretch....it can't do, otherwise your tyres would blow off the rim before you get 100 psi into them. (that's 100 pounds per square inch of area....somebody else will have to work out how much force the tyre bead withstands without stretching...)
If the tyre bead doesn't stretch, how do you get the bloody thing off, or on, other than moving the slack round to where you are working...?
The extra difficulty with stiff-sidewall tyres is simply that the stiff sidewalls spring the tyre beads out of the rim well so that they rest on the bead seat, which is a bigger diameter than the rim well.....so no slack!

Watched the video, excellent. Also thought the trick of using toe straps useful.

NEvans wrote:Watched the video, excellent. Also thought the trick of using toe straps useful.

Wide re-useable plastic cable ties (ty-raps) work well too and are cheaper and lighter than (leather) toe straps.

I'm posting here because I discovered a refinement to the excellent tips from 531Colin.
Keywords: fix replace mount remount tyres stiff difficult tubeless ready compatible rim bead well (in case someone is searching)

Yesterday I needed to remove and replace a Schwalbe Marathon Supreme 37-622 tyre on DT Swiss R500db rim. The rim is tubeless compatible but I am using the tyre variant for inner tubes. After having huge difficulty getting it off then on again the tyre went flat and it was obvious I had not fixed the puncture properly (tiny holes from a thorn). Sigh!

So I went looking for advice and found a post from 2016 on Bike Radar (https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/19923123#Comment_19923123, scroll down a bit, and thanks to the person to posted it) clarifying what I never realised before and what Colin may be doing in the video:

The advice is to take care to keep the further side bead mounted on the channel next to the rim wall, and to push ONLY the near side bead (the one you are trying to seat) into the well in the middle of the rim. This may be only applicable to tubeless compatible rims and would be easier because they have a definite, separate channel there (the R500db does at least) - I was able to keep the bead there when removing the tyre quite easily with a little care.

When I followed this advice the tyre was easier to get off (still needed a lever though) AND I was easily able to reseat the tyre WITH NO LEVERS, and my hands are not particularly strong. I was amazed, because before when I tried and had both beads in the well it took a lot of effort with two tyre levers to get it back on and I was starting to think that I would need to use different tyres or rims when I start taking this bike further away from home.

I have another bike with Exal LX17 rims and the same tyres which I have always found hard to remove and replace - I will try sometime to see if the same trick works there though that rim is not tubeless ready so maybe harder to do. BTW I am a fan of the Supremes - very comfortable, quite fast rolling and reasonably robust (so far averaging about 1 p**** per 2,500km on poor condition back lanes and some riding on farm tracks, so very pleased to have learned this trick!

Hope this helps someone - kind of obvious once you know but it just didn't occur to me before.

531Colin thank you for your advice and if you have more comments would be good to hear!

Peter H

sheer laziness means that when removing a tyre, I generally (unless I know the tyre is loose enough to come off without levers) don't bother deliberately unseating the far bead when dealing with the near bead, so the problem of two beads fighting for space in a narrow rim well doesn't usually arise.

I am no great fan of tyre/rim combinations that are difficult to deal with; this means that I would only suggest that you use tubeless compatible rims if you are definitely going to use tubeless tyres; otherwise you are consigning yourself to the worst of both worlds, if you like.

You may well find that the Exal rims are tight with most tyres anyway; this is oft-reported. You may also find that small differences in rim tape thickness can make an appreciable difference to the way tyres come on and off the rim.

cheers

Brucey wrote:sheer laziness means that when removing a tyre, I generally (unless I know the tyre is loose enough to come off without levers) don't bother deliberately unseating the far bead when dealing with the near bead, so the problem of two beads fighting for space in a narrow rim well doesn't usually arise.

I am no great fan of tyre/rim combinations that are difficult to deal with; this means that I would only suggest that you use tubeless compatible rims if you are definitely going to use tubeless tyres; otherwise you are consigning yourself to the worst of both worlds, if you like.

You may well find that the Exal rims are tight with most tyres anyway; this is oft-reported. You may also find that small differences in rim tape thickness can make an appreciable difference to the way tyres come on and off the rim.

cheers

Interesting.

I hadn’t thought through the tubed/tubeless question when I bought the bike, and simply accepted the recommendation to use these rims. Before I found that little tip I was seriously thinking about changing rims or tyres so as to be either tubed or tubeless, and a combination which would be easier to deal with. However, this revelation suggests the current combination is actually OK. Certainly rides nicely. I will practise a couple more times and check I can get the rear tyre off and on again without trouble and if so, will leave it until tyres or rims need replacing.

Peter H

DT swiss website https://www.dtswiss.com/en/products/rims/road/cross-road/r-500/ seems to be using the same illustration for "500" rims, both "db" - presumably disc brake - and the other one - presumably rim brake....but maybe I'm confused.
The cross-section illustration (I can only find it under rim brake) shows wide bead seats and quite a narrow semi-circular rim well in the middle....if its easier to get the tyre off with just one bead in that rim well, then that's what I would do; I have never found that to be the case on other rims, but I haven't tried them all!
Also I have never tried tubeless, but with tubes I always take the whole thing off (check for thorns, etc/) put a little bit of air in the tube, put the tube in the tyre and fit the whole lot at once, so getting just one bead in the rim well while you do that might be difficult to judge.

In the video, I regret not making it clear enough that you have to get the tyre beads into the well of the rim in order to get the tyre OFF as well as ON. ….including un-sticking a tyre that's been fitted for a while. I see people just jam a lever under the tyre bead and heave on it, then complain their levers aren't strong enough when they break, or complain that the tyre isn't strong enough when they abrade the carcass under the bead and it subsequently fails.

531colin wrote:DT swiss website https://www.dtswiss.com/en/products/rims/road/cross-road/r-500/ seems to be using the same illustration for "500" rims, both "db" - presumably disc brake - and the other one - presumably rim brake....but maybe I'm confused.
The cross-section illustration (I can only find it under rim brake) shows wide bead seats and quite a narrow semi-circular rim well in the middle....if its easier to get the tyre off with just one bead in that rim well, then that's what I would do; I have never found that to be the case on other rims, but I haven't tried them all!
Also I have never tried tubeless, but with tubes I always take the whole thing off (check for thorns, etc/) put a little bit of air in the tube, put the tube in the tyre and fit the whole lot at once, so getting just one bead in the rim well while you do that might be difficult to judge.

In the video, I regret not making it clear enough that you have to get the tyre beads into the well of the rim in order to get the tyre OFF as well as ON. ….including un-sticking a tyre that's been fitted for a while. I see people just jam a lever under the tyre bead and heave on it, then complain their levers aren't strong enough when they break, or complain that the tyre isn't strong enough when they abrade the carcass under the bead and it subsequently fails.

The pictures on the DT Swiss web site are definitely the disc brake version same as I have. And yes, the central well is relatively narrow and deep so that’s probably why this trick of pushing just the near bead into it makes such a big difference - and it did, it was really shockingly easy to push on! I’ll experiment with pushing the near side bead really deep into the well when I take one of these off next time and see - I didn’t really do that this time.

The Exal LX17 rim as I recall has a relatively shallow well (it is a while since I needed to take a tyre off that rim but the cross section picture on exal’s web site supports this). However, a quick back of envelope estimate suggests that if I can get the near bead even 1mm deeper into it for half of the rim circumference that would make a lot of difference, so will experiment next time it’s needed, maybe even try fitting and removing without rim tape and if that helps then getting some thinner tape as suggested earlier - till then will leave well alone

Thanks!

Peter H