Bike Work

With only a week and a half till the first race of the season, I'm running out of time to work out all the kinks and idiosyncrasies of my Spot setup. The last big hurdle was getting my i9 wheels setup and on the bike.

The rear SS hub came with a quick release axle, so first up was converting that over to a bolt on axle. Not too difficult, but I did lose a tiny set screw in the process, and not the kind of set screw you can pick-up at the Home Depot.

Second task was converting the wheels over to Stan's tubeless system. The rims are Stan's ARCH 29er tubeless rims, but this was the first time I've worked with this kind of setup. In the past I've slapped Stan's rubber rim strip in any old rim, filled the tire with liquid latex, air and I was done. This new setup was a little more complicated. First you cover the spoke holes with Stan's special nylon strapping tape. The wheel has to be perfectly clean and the tape has to go on perfectly straight.

Of course it doesn't just do this on its own. I had to tape and retape a few times to get it right. The toughest part was trying to get it smooth and straight wearing latex gloves. They recommend you wear gloves to keep the oil of your fingers off the taping surface. Running a latex covered finger over the tape to smooth and tighten the tape against the rim doesn't work so well. The trick I figured out was to get it as tight as possible by pulling on it, then use a wadded up paper towel to smooth and flatten as you applied the tape around the rim.

After the nylon spoke hole tape comes the yellow rim strip tape. I think the purpose of this tape is to take up the last little bit of space between the rim and the tire, so the liquid latex has less gap to fill and seal when inflating. The rubber strip I used in the past served this purpose. It was used for any rim you wanted to convert to tubeless. It's job was to fill the gap between the tire and rim, so sealing would be easier. With the new NoTubes specific rims, you don't need the rubber strip. The new rims are made to have less of a gap already for the tubeless conversion. The yellow strip fills and seals that last little bit. It goes on like the nylon strapping tape.

Yeah. It looks like the first picture. The process is the same. Here's the finished product.

And with tire mounted.

Each wheel took about an hour. With the old system you were worried about sealing the tire to the rim. You would hold and spin the wheel a certain way to get all the latex into the seal between the rim and the tire. With these new rims, my problem is the seal around the spokes. With two layers of tape, I could hear air coming around the spokes. I couldn't feel it or see latex spilling through, but you could hear it seeping. Trying to get the latex inside the tire up to the spoke holes was a challenge. I did a bunch of goofy tosses and squeezes trying to get the latex to fight gravity and get to the holes. Eventually it worked and both wheels held air at pressures greater than 45psi - not that I'll ever run that pressure.

With the tires mounted, it was time to mount the rear wheel to the bike and align the chain.

And it's done.

A few rides, hopefully nothing blows up, I'll get them retentioned and be ready to race. I'm interested to see how the WTB 2.55 weirwolf does up front. Everyone else has been getting Rampage's for the front. It's definitely a good tire (the rampage). Looks meaty and I hear corners really well, but it's really knobby, hence the grip. Really knobby is great for the fall and winter, but I don't want to race on it. When I was running my Surly 1x1 I ran WTB Weirwolves in the 26" variety. They were awesome! I did things with those tires I shouldn't have been able to do. When WTB finally came out with a 29er version, I had to try it. It's not the grippy meatiness the 26" version was, but it covers the sidewall more then the exiwolf I'm running now does. My biggest complaint about the exiwolf is lack of confidence in the corners. I'm hoping the Weirwolf cures that. If not, it's the Rampage for sure.

Yeah so that's a lot of shop talk, but there's a lot of shop time spent keeping these things running. Between all the riding, maintenance, my job, home, home life and sleeping, I need a longer day.

Next up is changing and adding shims to my road shoes. This one is going to be a doozy.

-b