Monday Blues: On Old Sealant, Oily Gunk and Random Wires

You know, a lot of folks, believing themselves to be not mechanical-minded enough, are hesitant to work on their own bikes, and while a good local bike shop will appreciate your business, there are certain tasks that, with a little preparation, are easy enough to take care of yourself. One such maintenance task is replacing the sealant in a tubeless tire.

For the past couple weeks I've needed to add air to my rear tire before each ride, and if two days passed between rides it would be completely flat and require a full fifty compressions of the floor pump to get it up to the 35-40 psi that I prefer. A good shoulder workout, I suppose, but the frequency had become annoying. The tire wasn't going flat because of a puncture, yet I wasn't sure if the problem was at the valve, or if the tire didn't seat quite properly when I put on a new one two weeks earlier. Marks along the bead, all the way around the circumference suggested the latter, but either way something had to be done. So...

off came the tire. I soaked up what sealant remained inside, which wasn't much, and examined the rim tape which looked to be in excellent condition. I gave the rim, inside and out a good wipe-down with my favored cleaner - Muck-Off...

then came the tire. The bead had a coating of old sealant on it which, I decided, needed to be cleaned off. I'm not sure how necessary this step is, and I bet if you posed the question to a group of riding buddies hanging out at the local bike shop you'd get a fair scattering of opinions. There were places, however, where the stuff was thick enough that I thought it might prohibit proper seating and a good seal...

Unfortunately the Muck-Off did very little to help with this cleaning step. The only thing that really worked was scraping it off, right along with a couple fingernails. Hours later, my thumb still felt like I had jabbed some splinters up under the nail.

Eventually though, I got the bead looking like some approximation of new.

Before going any further, I'd clean up that old gunk that is now all over the floor. Step in it and drag it into the house and there'll be hell to pay.

A few days earlier I had stopped at the LBS and picked up this set of Serfas tubeless valves. It seems like a pretty good set - coming with two valves, seals for different shaped rims, even a core remover which, admittedly I wouldn't need since I was replacing the entire valve. I inserted the new valve...

pushed a little rubber 'O' ring up against the outside of the rim, then snugged up the little screw-on bolt thingy, finger tight for an air tight seal.

Since the wheel was off, it was a good opportunity to give the rim a good looking over, checking for cracks or other evidence of wear and tear. I don't know about you, but months can pass between close examinations, plenty of time for problems to develop and grow. The rim looked pretty clean, just a few scratches and minor pits, both probably caused by rocks. There was one gouge bigger than the others, big enough that I might remember to keep an eye on it.

Time to get the tire back on. There are two methods to this, one uses a special syringe to force the sealant into the tire through the valve stem (and requires you to take out and then reinstall the valve core), while the alternate method, and the one I use) requires no extra tools. When you are adding sealant without use of a syringe, you will get the tire almost completely on the rim, leaving just a bit still off, as shown above, and...

get your bottle of sealant; in this case I had a nearly full bottle of Stans...

that I then poured into the tire at the recommended amount per your tire size. Seems easy enough, but I still managed to make a minor mess of it. Once you have the proper amount of sealant in the tire, slowly and carefully rotate the tire so that the portion of tire still off the rim is at the top (off the ground) and work the remaining bit of bead onto the rim (as you would do with any wheel set up. Now comes the part that has always given me the most problem - pumping air into the thing. If you have an air compressor, this should not be a problem, as the rapid inflation will cause the tire to seat on the rim as it should. This step might not be so easy if all you have is a floor pump; the last time I did this I just could not pump air in quick enough to force a good seal, and after dropping minutes and buckets of sweat in the heat of the garage, I gave up and ran through four Co2 cartridges before I finally got it to hold. This time, though, and honestly every other time I have done this, the floor pump method worked just fine. I put about 25 psi in the tire, was relieved when my ears picked up those comforting pops a properly seating tire makes, then spun it and oscillated it, bounced it and played the old hoop and stick game with it, enough to give the now sealed insides a good coating of sealant, and...

with the wheel still off gave another check of any other maintenance issues that needed to be addressed. Immediately, that embarrassing build-up of gunk on that one rear derailleur pulley caught my eye; when and where I picked up a random piece of wire that had wrapped itself around the pulley was equally troubling and, both issues, were doing nothing to help my speed. I pulled the pulley, scraped the thick gunk off with a screwdriver, untangled the wire, finished it all off with more Muck-Off...

re-lubricated the threads...

and got it back to looking like it should.

I know, I would not normally use the cap either, but since it is nicely color coordinated... why not! Ready to give it a try? There are videos out there that you can watch in less time than it probably took to read all these words (though hardly as satisfying, right? wrong?), and there is little in life more satisfying than fixing a problem yourself.