Monday, April 6, 2009

Tubeless @ 65psi

The Short Version- Tubeless and 65psi goes Boom!

The Long Version- Wisconsin winters are long and cold. So with bikes on the brain back in January, I turned into a mad scientist and mixed up a batch of homemade tubeless sealant and with some extra sets of 26" tubes wanted to try ghetto tubeless. Knowing I had buddies with the same interests as I, I invited a couple guys over for a tubeless party. We did 3 29er bikes in all, all ghetto tubeless with home-brew sealant. Following posted instuctions the wheels held air and we were all confident and excited to ride them someday. The problem was it was still winter, so they sat. Fast forward to last weekend. Temps were going to be 50's and we made a plan to do a 50 mile rail trail ride Friday morning with an afternoon stop for lunch (and a pint). Well, Thursday night, I get a message from one of my riding buddies, we will call him T-bone, and T-bone's message says "My wheel just blew up and I think my ear is bleeding!" Huh???

I call T-bone to get the story. He says "Since we were going to do a rail trail ride I figured I would pump my tires up to the max PSI as stated on my sidewall. So... I put in 65 PSI like it says. I was checking my pedals while it was on the stand and I could hear a hissing coming from the back wheel so I tried to find it and it went away. I went back to my pedal and then...BOOM!!!! My tire blew off the rim!" He went on to say it was so loud that when his wife came down to ask what happened he couldn't hear her. He said there was a silhouette of his legs on the ground from the sealant blast that looked like a chalk outline, and the beer he had sitting off to the side foamed over from the explosion. Yeah... I know... I was trying not to laugh.
The tire blew completely off the rim and even pulled the rimstrip off with it. The wheel wasn't permanently damaged but it was significantly out of true.

The lesson to be learned from this... Dont assume your friends know not to go over 40psi when running tubeless. Make sure you tell them.

Now, I know what you are thinking, "This story means nothing without a picture." So here you go.



1 comment:

c. said...

Damn you Bart... Didn't they ever teach you to inflate tires in the Cage!

I'm calling AM1 Shaffer to let him know you screwed up this one...