So, got the rims all polished finally and have some ?s about wrapping the rubber on them. I got the bigfoots on, tube inserted, not pinched in the rim halves or bead. When I went to inflate them and check the bead seat it looked like the inside of one of them was a little #@%$#!-eyed? There's little rings around the tire near the bead - maybe 4 or 5 lines about 1/4 inch apart, for a good inch or so - and it seemed that on one side of the wheel there were no rings visible, all visible on the other side. I deflated, jiggled, re-inflated etc but couldn't quite get it to sit right to my mind.

Pretty sure there's loads of help to be had on the Playa but thought I'd ask in case it was easy to rectify here.

To be honest, I'm not really sure why we run tubes inside of tubeless tires anyway. Is it a throw back to standard plastic buggy rims or what?

Macboy needs them because he has split style rims. If you are talking about the bead overlap that covers the rim edge it could just take a few rotations under load to seat into place. If something else then ignor what I just wrote.:dunno:

Forgot about the 2 piece wheel part. Don't some 2 piece wheels have O-rings in the middle to forgo tubes? I think I have seen some older ATV wheels that do that.

Since you had 2 piece rims, you probably didn't use any soap for mounting. It helps everything slip into place and makes the tire shiny as a bonus. Is there a negative to using tubes other than purchase price? It certainly is worth the effort to install it to avoid the issue of the bead not catching to allow the pressure to build enough to seat the bead IMHO. I've done it both ways and the tube makes the process linear instead of using tricks to get the tubeless tire to hold the air at the start.

Quote:

Originally posted by BeamerBob Since you had 2 piece rims, you probably didn't use any soap for mounting. It helps everything slip into place and makes the tire shiny as a bonus. Is there a negative to using tubes other than purchase price? It certainly is worth the effort to install it to avoid the issue of the bead not catching to allow the pressure to build enough to seat the bead IMHO. I've done it both ways and the tube makes the process linear instead of using tricks to get the tubeless tire to hold the air at the start.

Ditto. After deflating my tubeless for the flight to NABX last year I had trouble getting a seal on the beads, even after wiping off the Jekyll Island sand and using some tire snot. Went to tube.

I used to have fun beading my supermoto motorcycle tires(very short sidewall and very wide tire). A trick I used was spray your tire beads down with a bunch of soap/water solution, and overinflate your tubes till the tire beads. Then let some air out of the tube until you get to your desired pressure. Most tubes will physically hold about 3 times their designed pressure before the will start to fatigue. My racing tubes and tires were designed to be run at 35 to 40 PSI. Sometimes I would have to inflate to well over 60 PSI to get the tires to bead.

Yeah I just came in the house because I was in the garage working on my kite trailer and came across an old set of cart wheels. And they have Orings as well. But I remember what a hastle it was getting the ring into the grove and then holding it with my big hands and trying to bolt it all together...:flaming:.. Damn I'm getting frustrated typing about it!!!
Good luck anyway you choose to go. I use tubes for the ease of it.

I'll try the soap thing. Righto with the split rims + tubes required for me although I suspect the BF's WOULD potentially work with some sort of o-ring but I trust the good old fashioned tubes.

Buddy of mine worked at a tire shop during high school. We'd piss around with ether and a match getting the initial "whomp!" to get the beads on tubeless tires to lock in....anything to play with fire

I got tired (ha ha- tired) of pinching holes in tubes whilst installing. On my wheels, I just got the tire on the wheel and ran a tie down around the circumference of the tire, cinched it down until the beads were in place, and added air. Or had the tire shop do it when I got them (free and no hassle.)

I am thinking your trying to squeeze a bigfoot onto a 4x8" rim? And an innertube? I've done that - you can soap the crap out of that rim and put 35psi into that tire and it will not mount. You'll see the little lines on the sidewalls and it seems that there are a few lines missing on one side, and that is because there are. When you try and cram that much rubber into a tiny space it starts to just hate you. Even if it does mount all you have to do is run your hand over the sidewall and you'll notice a series of ripples, when you mount the tire on the bug it will have a real nice wobble to it. If I were you I would order some of the slicks from a wind of change and just go with those - you really don't want to destroy those bigfoots for a couple of days out on the playa - on grass and sand those things will last almost forever.