Tubeless tire set up guides, the internet is loaded with them, and many of them are good. The Analog Tubeless Set Up Guide is based on research, trial and error, and a whole bunch of tubeless conversions. Just like everything we write, this guide is long winded and overtly informative. It’s laid out in sections. Tools needed, Set up Steps, Maintenance and Component Selection.
Start by roughing up the surface of the inside of the rim. You really just need to do the rim bead, where the tubeless tape is gunna stick. Gently scrub the emery cloth all over the rim bed, just enough to lightly abrade the surface. Like when you are putting a patch on a tube. Spray the rim bed with your bottle of alcohol and throughly wipe out the roughed up rim particles with the clean rag. Do it a few times to make sure it’s really clean. Then wait a few minutes for the alcohol traces to evaporate. Wipe it once more with a fresh bit of dry rag.
Start two inches above the valve hole, wrap over the hole and around the rim. Overlap the hole by 2 inches. 1.75 inches is fine. Just some overlap, that’s what ya need. Stretch the tape tight. Certain tapes on the market really perform terribly, making it very hard to get rid of all the bubbles, and lack a good adhesive. See the component guide section for more info. Work out all the bubbles as you go. This is easiest to do in a truing stand or when the wheel is mounted to the bike and the bike is in a decent work stand. It’s doable just by placing the wheel on the ground, but suboptimal. If you have a wider rim and only medium wide tape, you can start the tape on one side rim, do the full wrap, then mosey the tape over to the other side of the rim, letting the tape overlap in the center. You want at least 5mm of overlap there. More is ideal.
Taping fat bike rims are a whole other can of worms, skip over this paragraph if this does not apply to your wheelset. Fat bike rims have a cloth rim strip that our tape doesn’t really like to stick to. So what we’ve found to work best is to first lay down a layer of Gorilla Tape over the center of the cloth strip. Then get out tubeless tape and run it around the rim, two to three layers. If you want to be extra extra sure your fat bike tubeless is going to work the first try, then get both wide (2-3″,) and a narrower (3/4″-1″) roll of tubeless tape and run 1-2 rounds of that on either side of the rim bed. Meaning around the left edge of the wide tape 1-2 rounds, as well as the right edge 1-2 rounds. Run your fingers or a blunt plastic tool (I like to use tire levers) around the edges of the tape to make sure everything is sticking together as best it can. Phew! Now proceed onto the next step!
Prick a hole in the tape where the valve stem goes. Ideally you have an awl, and ideally you heat that awl tip up with a flame until it’s hot. Doesn’t need to be red hot, but hotter is better. Think about butter. Now stop thinking about butter. Softly slide the hot awl through the valve hole, from the inside of the rim to the outside. This will melt the tape, not cut it, and it will be stronger and less fussy as a result. If you can’t do this, just jam a nail through, it’ll be fine.
Install the tubeless valve stems, and make sure the lock nut on the outside of the rim is snug. Much tighter than you would with a tube. Air will try to leak out here so it’s gotta be tight. Finger tight, not pliers tight. Problem Solvers makes a P-Nut that’s intended to help your fings get a bit of extra leverage here, we recommend it.
Remove the valve core of the valve stem. We like to use this little park tool valve core remover, but you can use small pliers if you are careful and patient. Put the valve core somewhere safe, like in the middle of a light grey shag rug.
Mount the tire fully. Line the tire label up with the valve stem, ya slouch.
Paint soapy water all along the tire bead. Both sides. Get it betwixt the bead and rim hook. Or lack of a hook, if you have plastic newfangled rims. We just slop it on, like sauce on a brisket.
Hang the wheel up, so there is nothing pushing on the tire. We hang it from an old handlebar we put in a vise, but you could hang it from a hook, or a bike stand. Position it so the valve stem is at roughly 12 o’clock. Main thing here is: the tire should not be touching anything like the ground, that would deform the tire.
Seat the tire. Lightly massage (push down on) the tire so that the bead is sorta near the hook of the rim. If the bead is say, letting the back of the valve stem be exposed, you will just blast air into the room, not into the tire. Hide that valve stem inside the tire. For fat bike tires, this is critical, you can run a tire lever along either tire bead to pull it closer to the rim.
Blast air into the tire.
Things get weird here.
Take the air compressor hose off the valve, and let all the air drain out. Because the wheel is hanging in the air, and the tire isn’t touching anything that will cause it to deform, but it should hold all or most of its seal.
Shake your sealant like you are demonstrating a shake weight. Take your Orange Seal sealant and use the applicator hose to shoot 2-4 ounces of sealant into the tire. 2 oz for tires up to 35mm. 4 for bigger stuff. It’s light, and more isn’t bad. Eyeball this. Don’t get out the graduated cylinder.
Reinflate. The tire should bang into place. You proved it would work by inflating it with no sealant. If it does not, it’s probably spitting sealant from somewhere. Sort of pinch, moosh, and pull on the tire where it’s foaming. If that fails, take the wheel off its perch and move it around like a drunken space station spinning off axis. What you are trying to do is get the sealant to flow where the tire is having trouble sealing. The trick is doing the space station dance while holding the compressor head on the valve stem and blowing air in there. Again, because you set this up before, with no sealant, and it worked, you should be just a shimmy shimmy, yeah from getting the tire to seal. Inflate till the tire fully seats and snaps into place. It does NOT need to be rock hard. Make sure the tire bead is evenly seated all the way around the rim. If it’s dipping anywhere, deflating and soaping that area is usually the ticket.
Now, dig the valve core out of the shag carpet, and quickly screw it back into the valve stem. Use the pliers or park valve core tool to tighten it. Snug it down good, cause if you don’t, you’ll try to use your awesome OneUp EDC pump on the valve one day and it will unscrew the valve core when you remove the pump, leaving you cursing, covered in swarms of mosquitoes on the side of a rubble-strewn, endless, uphill trail in the middle of Pennsylvania. Open the presta valve like you would a normal tube, and inflate to maybe 10 psi above your desired pressure. Now bust out the Meiser gauge to bleed air right to your target PSI.
Ideally, now you put the wheels on your bike, give them a spin or 3 and then leave it alone overnight. In the morning, if the whole program is softer than Bread’s Greatest Hits, don’t worry. Re-inflate, and go for a ride. The riding will distribute the sealant around the sidewalls of the tire, and let it soak in. It will dry up anywhere air is trying to pass through the tire.
Dang, you are all set. Top off air as needed, but it won’t be more often than with a tube. After everything is dialed and holding air, you can adjust air pressure as desired. We usually go about 10 psi lower than ya would with a normal tube, but that’s just a rough starter number.
At this point you are thinking, that’s 16 friggin’ steps, dude! What kinda over wrought, painful process is this tubeless crud?
Of course it’s a bunch of steps when you write it all out, and discuss possible problems that can arise. The same could be said for a long, detailed discussion on how to install an inner tube. There are at least 11 steps that I can think of off the top of my head involved in mounting a tube in a tire. Is this more involved? Yes! But with a bit of know how, and contingency plans for all possible outcomes, you’ll breeze through it. And you won’t be stuck on the side of the road, fixing a flat in the rain.
