Painless Tubeless

[richvs]

Not strictly MYOG but here's the best place for it.

I went ghetto tubeless on my 2015 Longitude a while ago and I've tried various things; Stan's rubber strips, gorilla tape and some other thin tape.
I swap tyres betwen knobblies and Super Moto slicks fairly often, sometimes disturbing the tape when changing tyres. Then follows the dull and soul destroying process of making sure I've dried it out enough to retape and hoping it seals.

No longer!

I found a bag of 3/8" cable grommets and they fit the rim's internal holes snugly. Pumped it up dry (!) and it seated and sealed first time. Stan's in and it's held for a week so far with no noticeable pressure drop.

The grommets fit tightly enough that there is absolutely no worry about disturbing them with a cack-handed tyre lever. Weighs less than the dust in your treads. As a bonus, spoke tweaking or replacement only require removal of one grommet, not all your tape.

Worth a try if you've had any issues with tape in the past!





Kit
Alexrims Supra 35 rim (oem 2015 Longitude)
Schwalbe Super Moto 29x2.35
Schwalbe Rock Razor rear/Nobby Nic front combo
Stans jizz
3/8 blind cable grommets. Pennies from a hardware shop or a few quid per tyre on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007OUVFZI

[Gari]

Genius, will try that as I was gonna try to convert the WTF to tubeless this week sometime. Off to Amazon to see what the sizing options are and measure my rims......

[richvs]

Forgot to mention I did use a strip of Gorilla tape for the valve but only to the next hole each way and nowhere near the bead seat.

Running an emergency tube would still be OK with this setup; it would certainly be fine to finish a ride and get you home.
Longer term the tube might try to bond to the grommets and chafe or pull. I'd zinc tape over the top to be safe; I always carry some for repairing humans.

[slarge]

I can imagine that if you have a tight tyre that needs to sit in the valley to get it mounted to the wheel, the grommets might not help, but it looks like a good solution to rimstrips.

[Zippy]

Fancy pumping it right up and telling us when they burst? .

Neat, nice lateral thinkin(even have a set of correct size grommets kicking about). I personally think I prefer tape for both clearance of tyres and the higher pressures it can withstand, i also reckon I can do tape quicker too.

[belugabob]

Certainly an interesting (and clever) twist on the usual tubeless threads.

I'm kind of spoiled, as I have bontrager TLR rims, tape and tyres, so have never experienced the trials and tribulations that I often read about on forums ( although this might change, if I decide to go tubeless on my other bike, and didn't want to buy tubeless wheels)

[Mariner]

Might be possible to reduce the profile inside the tyre by using panel blanking grommets.
These have much lower profile but very good idea.

[richvs]

I think it only works because the thickness of the grommet helps avoid deformation when the pressure comes on. A thinner one would have to be much harder to prevent forcing through, probably such that it wouldn't conform to the valley.

Zippy; I suspect I'd lose the tyre off the rim before they blew out, but I'm not going to test it (other than a short ride at ~30psi)! The best thing that could happen would be that the tyre ends up too hard; the worst could be damage and the most annoying could be having to fish the buggers out of the rim!

This was a rare perfect storm for me; something that worked first time without iterative improvement.

[ootini]

I think it only works because the thickness of the grommet helps avoid deformation when the pressure comes on. A thinner one would have to be much harder to prevent forcing through, probably such that it wouldn't conform to the valley.

Zippy; I suspect I'd lose the tyre off the rim before they blew out, but I'm not going to test it (other than a short ride at ~30psi)! The best thing that could happen would be that the tyre ends up too hard; the worst could be damage and the most annoying could be having to fish the buggers out of the rim!

This was a rare perfect storm for me; something that worked first time without iterative improvement.

Almost unrelated, but how do you find the RockRazor / NobbyNic combo?

[richvs]

Pretty good; the semislick rear rolls fast enough on road and sinks into mud enough for the outer lugs to work. It also catches loose dirt/gravel nicely if you lean.
The Nobby Nic is nothing special, I just wanted something tougher than the stock conti X-kings which got shredded by flint.

I bought the RR when it was only available as a Supergravity carcass with extra thick sidewalls and Trailstar rubber. It's now available with Pacestar harder rubber and normal snakeskin sidewalls (cheaper and 300g lighter!).
Don't be me; buy that one.

[redefined_cycles]

Excellent idea. Will try it next time if I need to Dont really have a problem with stans steip or ghetto (inner tube cut down) on my mtb but have gone tubeless in the roadie and the higher pressures are a pain. Might just be the fact that I jeep using non tubeless tires. I wonder if this trick would work on high psi of road tires as it would be good stuff (will be getting tubeless road tires next time I mess around with the road tubeless)...