The big brown truck pulled up and dropped off a box for me, I tore into it like a child on Christmas morning because I knew that my wheelset was suppose to be delivered and bamn! new hoops for the K2! I pulled everything out of the box to look it over and the wheels were pretty wide looking, this is a good thing! Wheels? check! tubes? check! rim tape? check! gear cables? check! headset spacers? uh huh! and into my bike bag I went for my tire levers.
Once I had the levers in hand I ran upstairs and grabbed the WTB Graffiti SF tires and was ready to go, or so I thought. Now normally I can change a tire in about 5 minutes and that's removing the tire, replacing the tube and pumped back up so I am thinking that I will have the wheels ready to go and be installing the cassette in about 15 minutes.... Wrong! I pried, and pushed but to no avail, this is the most stubborn set of tires that I have ever had the displeasure of trying to mount! so onto the net I went looking for solutions to my problem. I came across a thread on a forum saying to use a hair dryer to warm the bead up so I did... I came across another post that said to try baby powder so I did... I worked on the wheels for at least an hour and a half and by the end of that I had the front tire and tube mounted and the rear tire is on completely on one side and about 3/4 of the other. Here is a look at the wheelset as it came out of the box, they seem to spin freely and true and if I can get the tires on I hope to ride on them one day!
By the end of the ordeal my thumb was sore and I had straightened out 4 Park Tool tire levers, the levers did not break but the hooks on the end actually straightened out! worse than that? when the first one straightened out it popped off of the wheel and I punched myself in the face! yay! I did say that I got the front tire and tube mounted right? and that's awesome! well it would have been anyways if I hadn't pinched the tube while mounting the wheel, so when I pumped it up that "Hsssssssssss" sound that was deflating the tire was literally deflating my excitement over the new set of wheels. Here is where I left it, notice the baby powder all over everything including the throw rug... yeah that needed to be cleaned up before the wife got home! hey, I thought this was a 10 minute job when I started!
I haven't decided whether I am going to bring them into the LBS, buy a tube for the front have them install it and ask them if they can pop the bead onto the rear while I'm there, or if I will just but some steel cored levers and have at it myself because I am stubborn like that. I don't want to wait for Kool stop tire bead jack to come from amazon or ebay even though I am pretty sure its probably the best route to take, hey I'm a kid like that! a bit annoyed that the tires are not cooperating I did as I said put them down for the day and if the rotors were here I would be a little bit more annoyed but I suppose I can wait.
The difficulty in mounting these tires does have me thinking about perhaps getting something different to mount because if I flat out on a ride I will need a support vehicle to come and get me because if its this hard at home, imagine how it would go out on a ride.
To be determined I suppose..
and with that the end comes to another post.
The difficulty in mounting these tires does have me thinking about perhaps getting something different to mount because if I flat out on a ride I will need a support vehicle to come and get me because if its this hard at home, imagine how it would go out on a ride.
To be determined I suppose..
and with that the end comes to another post.
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