A New Way to Mount Tough Tires

by John Neugent

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John Neugent probably knows more about bicycle wheels than anyone else alive. Maybe more about bikes as well. He's spent his life in the bike business, at every level. He now owns Neugent Cycling, a firm devoted to delivering world-class equipment at the lowest possible price. If you are in the market for a set of wheels, please, check out John's site. He really knows his stuff. —Chairman Bill

John Neugent

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John Neugent writes:

In the good old days, it was simple.  But more recently, tubeless compatible wheels have become popular on road bikes.  That’s great if you are going to use a tubeless tire but if you don’t it makes tire installation more difficult because the shoulders holding the bead inside the rim are higher.

At the Sea Otter I ran into an old co-worker who is now at Challenge Tires who told me of a totally new way—at least for me—of mounting tires. 

Here are the simple instructions.

First put the tube in the tire.

Mount the tire with the tube in it starting at the valve stem and put both sides of the tire over the edge of either side of the rim.

On the opposite side, put the tire and tube inside the rim with both sides of the tire inside of the rim channel.  You now have proceeded to the point illustrated below.

Making sure the tire beads are in the central channel of the rim, you can mount the beads toward the valve stem–mounting the beads near the stem last.

One of the real beauties of this system is that the tube is held into the center of the rim by the valve stem so if you have to use levers, there is much less chance of pinching the tube because it’s inside the rim channel.  I previously did an article on the same issue and it has some other things to make tire mounting easier.  If you want to read those check here.

John Neugent was was one of the first to establish quality hand building in Taiwan around the turn of the century. He now owns Neugent Cycling, a firm devoted to delivering world-class equipment at the lowest possible price.