Mounting tires?

[climb4fun]

I just read an exchange on another forum about difficulty mounting a certain tire on a certain rim. They reamed the poor guy.

Now for what it is worth - I have been riding bicycles "seriously" for 20 years. I am a technician in industrial maintenance. I have built bicycles, road and mountain, from the frame up.

I see all the time on forums that someone can mount a tire with just their bare hands. I have never been able to mount a tire without tools and have never witnessed it. My mentor gave me a really cool tool that kind of resembles a big can opener, without which I wouldn't have been able to mount the last tire wheel combination I tackled.

So wassup?

 

[carton]

On a MTB it's fairly simple. Road bike, it's quite possible, but I'd just rather use the levers. New tyres are harder to wrestle than old tyres.There's a video online of Greg Lemond doing it on (apparently new) road tyres without levers, there surely are many others.

It's one of those things that really depends on the situation. Changing old MTB tires and your lever is stashed away where you have to empty your bottle/saddle bag to get it? Go ahead. Gloveless on a freezing day with some new Michelin road tyres, and a lever in your jersey pocket? Just use the darn levers. But YMMV.

 

[avanti]

I just read an exchange on another forum about difficulty mounting a certain tire on a certain rim.
.....................................

Perhaps that certain rim was the 2016 Shimano Ultegra rim. I bought a set and it is a real struggle to install the tire (I use Conti Grand Prix 4000 S II tires. I've read this difficulty is due to the rim being designed for both tubed and tubeless tires.

 

[42x16ss]

Certain combinations can be very easy, certain combinations can be very difficult.

The worst experience I've had was Conti Gatorskins on DT Swiss RR1450's, I once broke a tyre lever trying to get them off. On the other hand, rims like Mavic, Vision, Velocity and Campagnolo are brands that tend to be easy to roll off with your hands, especially with softer tyres like Michelin, Vredestein, Vittoria, Conti GP 4000's etc. I've never had to use levers with those rims.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

I just read an exchange on another forum about difficulty mounting a certain tire on a certain rim.
.....................................

Perhaps that certain rim was the 2016 Shimano Ultegra rim. I bought a set and it is a real struggle to install the tire (I use Conti Grand Prix 4000 S II tires. I've read this difficulty is due to the rim being designed for both tubed and tubeless tires.

Well, to be honest, I've always found Continental GP 4000 tires to be a pain to mount. Last time I needed to mount a set of 4000s II on a pair of Ksyrium R-sys (2008) wheels it took forever, and I had to apply quite a lot of force on the lever.

On the other hand, all the Schwalbe tires I've owned (Ultremo, One, Durano) have been super easy to fit. No need to even use a lever for fitting them.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

I'd say it depends principally on the particulars of the rim/tyre combo. I've had a few road combos that I could re-mount the tyre on bare-handed. Certainly not when new, but after the bead had had some time to relax. Even then it was slower than using tyre levers would have been because I could only work the bead on slowly and in small increments. But I would do them bare-handed just the same because when a bead is that tight, you're also more likely to pinch the tube using tyre levers. And there's little I hate more than installing a new tube only to find I'd pinched it mounting the tyre.

I had to replace a failed spoke nipple this morning on a wheel with a Conti tyre on a Velocity rim. That tyre has been in use about six weeks and this was the first occasion I'd had to remove it since first mounted. That particular combo is so tight, I've broken tire levers in the attempt ( a great set-up for testing tyre lever durability!). I couldn't have mounted it bare-handed it my life depended on it.