As some well known blogger (bsnyc) once wrote, you're not serious until you've started to use adhesive to mount your tires. It seems like everybody and their pet chihuahua is blogging these days about proper tire gluing technique. Its been a while since our last post and we here at team BT, after long deliberation at team meetings (the bar), have decided to prepare a tutorial for our ever faithful audience on how to properly mount a tubular (or power bottom). Now a few words of caution, team BT's interest in tire mounting as of late has come about by the early season cross races that have tested our gluing techinique more than the limits of our strength and endurance (nobody on the team even broke a sweat at nittany). So far the team is 2 for 3 in the last three races in how many times a team member has rolled a tire.
Discalimer: none of these were glued at the shop.
So when asking about mounting technique our ever verbose wellspring of knowledge Mikey Green had this to say:
I would, but I'm out of town.
Just make sure you apply several layers to each the rim and the tire using thin even coats. I've found the V.Mastik to dry rather quickly which makes it a bit difficult the control.. Here are some tips:
work in small sections. Apply a bead of glue between spoke holes and spread. Once you get the flow, work slightly larger sections.
Rim, rim, tire, tire. By the time you've glued each four components, the first glued will be dry enough to apply another layer. Aim for three coats on each tire and rim. Remember thin even coats covering entire base tape and edge to edge on the rim. It's easiest to inflate the tire to keep shape and bend it to a figure eight.
Once all layers are on and dry, apply a bead all the way around the rim and spread it quickly. This is the wet coat. Tire will be mounted almost immediately.
Take deep breath.
Get your tire and insert the valve stem. Stretch the tire and set it in the rim bed in 6 inch increments. Stretch evenly. By the tome you get to the final section it should snap on with a little thumb effort.
Now make sure it is straight using the base tape around the stem area as a reference. Spin it and adjust any high or low spots as needed. Inflate more and make micro adjustments.
You're done. Now do it again with the other wheel and grab a victory beer.
M.g.
Or you can take Jacks approach: "its arts and craft time, lets glue one thing to another, C'mon we learned this in grade school"
