The Misery of Fitting a Tight Clincher Tyre

With our favourite tandem sidelined until I can take the rear section of the frame to the Seatpost Man in Chorley, I’ve taken it upon myself to sort out the Longstaff tandem.

I had this tandem frame built about 30 years ago and for the last 20 or so years it has seen very little use. It's a rather lovely single marathon frame finished in flam kingfisher blue. I had the frame built for fast riding rather than touring, and it has seen use on a couple of occasions in time trials. The tandem is pretty light for a tandem, but it's really a bit old-fashioned now: it has an elderly Campagnolo tandem chainset, Campagnolo tandem hubs with screw on freewheel, and Dia-Compe cantilevers. Gearing is Campagnolo Ergo-Shift, with a Choris rear mech and a triple front derailleur from  a long unavailable Campagnolo MTB groupset. I built the 40 spoke wheels with Mavic Module 3CD rims and 13G/14G butted spokes. Those rims are a bit limiting regarding tyre width.

I got it out of the garage and decided it might be better to replace the 25mm tyres with some 28mm ones that I had knocking around. To begin with, I removed the front wheel and took off the tyre. Grabbing the 28mm replacement I tried fitting it. At this point I noticed the rim had gathered a lot of orangey-brown rubbery powder. It turned out this was coming off the tyre I’d removed as well as the tyre I was about to try and fit.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed as though the 20+ year old Continental tyres (both those on the bike and those  not yet mounted) had suffered some degradation of the sidewalls, which looked rather precarious. I daresay bike tyres aren’t generally expected to be kept this long - in usual use they’d wear out or suffer an irreparable gash long before this sort of degradation would become apparent.

Bowing to reality, I added a pair of tyres to the order I was about to place for parts for sorting out the Thorn tandem.

A day or so later, the parcel arrived, and I set about replacing the tyres - beginning with the front wheel.

At this point I was quickly reminded of one thing about Continental tyres. They are bloody difficult to fit. So difficult in fact that one begins to wonder if they are actually really 622-28 tyres (they are). After failing to get the first bead on the rim (and in so doing twanging tyre levers around the garage, I decided to move operations into the kitchen, where I succeeded in getting the first bead on without losing the tyre levers in the tangle of cobwebs in the garage. Now, normally in these circumstances I can fit tyres with my fantastic VAR tyre levers. Not on this occasion. After another 45 minutes of struggling, I paused for a lunchbreak!

VAR tyre lever

Another bout of wrestling with the tyre, and I kept on nearly getting it on. But where it went wrong was that if the VAR tyre lever disengaged from the rim, the tyre instantly squirmed back off - the bead of the tyre has a peculiarly slippery rubbery finish to it. By this time my thumbs were sore and I was distracted by the appearance of the mail delivery.

Another failed attempt, marked by significant tantrums and swearing, was followed by renewed impetus, in which I used Fairy Liquid to lubricate the tyre bead. SUCCESS! It had been 4h since I began trying to fit this tyre…maybe I won’t do the rear until tomorrow, this was more exhausting than a threshold interval session on the turbo…good job this isn't a trike.

It is to be hoped I don't puncture - though I've found that removing/refitting a tyre after it has been used for a while is generally a bit easier.