5 tips to make fitting bike tyres easier
Removing and re-fitting tyres can be a right pain in the thumbs sometimes, but with the right techniques it really shouldn’t be. Here are a few tips to make removing and re-fitting tyres a whole lot easier and less painful;
1) Make sure the bead of the tyre is pushed down into the centre well of the rim.
This is the most common reason that people struggle to remove or fit a tyre. When the bead of the tyre is sat firmly on the bead of the rim the tyre is going to be as tight as possible to help the tyre stay on the rim and to create the best seal (for tubeless set ups), pushing both sides of the tyre off the bead of the rim and down into the well of the rim gives you the slack that you need to be able to remove the tyre. This is also the case when fitting a tyre, if you get round to the last part of the tyre going on and it gets incredibly hard to pop on, then the bead of the tyre most likely isn’t sat in the well, it’s probably stuck on the bead of the rim and therefore making the tyre a much tighter fit. Once you push the tyre back into the well you should have enough slack to be able to pop the tyre on with your hands.
2) Don’t use tyre levers to fit the tyre!
Only use tyre levers to remove a tyre, not to fit it. Using a tyre lever to fit a tyre will most likely damage something as you fit the tyre, that being pinching the tube (if you’re using one) or damaging the rim tape (which if you’re tubeless can be a massive headache and cause lots of swearing!). If you follow the first tip and make sure that the bead of the tyre is pushed into the well then you should be able to get the tyre on with your hands.
3) Removing and installing a rear wheel.
When removing a rear wheel with a derailleur, make sure the chain is on the smallest cog, and the Clutch is off (if your mech has one) then pull the knuckle of the derailleur whilst pushing the cage to move it out of the way and the wheel should drop out without much hassle. This helps when re-installing the rear wheel too.
It’s also good practice (especially with open drop out frames and forks) to tighten the skewer or bolt with the bike on it’s wheels on the floor, this will make sure everything has correctly located and will make aligning brakes and gears much easier.
4) Don’t forget to check the tyre rotation!
Tyre manufacturers haven’t spent a lot of time designing tyres only for people to fit them incorrectly. Make sure to check the side wall of the tyre before fitting it, there will almost definitely be an arrow or similar to denote the correct way that the tyre needs to rotate. A lot o mountain bike and gravel tyres will have dedicated rolling and braking edges. The rolling edge will generally be ramped to help reducing drag when going forwards and the braking edge will normally be a sharp edge to help bite into the ground when the brakes are applied.
Maxxis tyres are some of the easiest to check which way they’re designed to rotate because they only have the model logo on the drive side of the tyre.
5) Take up the slack.
Once you have made sure that the bead of the tyre is in the centre of the rim all the round both side you’ll have the last bit of the tyre to get onto the rim, this can be quite tough with some tyre/rim combinations. To make it easier you’ll need to take the slack from the parts of the bead that are on the rim and slide it round to the part of the bead that needs to be fitted. With the bead that needs to be fitted furthest away from you, start with your hands near the top of the tyre and slide your hands round to the other side, feeding the bead onto the rim as you go. As you get to the last part you should have enough slack to gently push the tyre onto the rim.
This can take a few goes to get right but once you master it you should be able to fit almost any tyre without using tyre levers.
Hopefully these tips will come in useful, let me know if they were and if you’ve got any tips of your own by dropping me an email on: rpbiketech@gmail.com
Watch out for more Tech Tuesday post’s coming soon!
