i broke a spoke at the bottom of the Tower Trail, and was commuting tomorrow for work, so off to the Man Cave to try to repair it. it was surprisingly easy, and the whole job including removing the cassette and truing the wheel took about 30 min. first time i’ve done that!

Since I was out there, and had finally fiddled with my new compressor last night, i decided to dive into my first ghetto tubeless wheel. I had an old crappy rim brake wheel that had seen 4 years on the Blur, took off the rim strip and covered it with one layer of pipe wrap. smoothed the wrap down with my fingers, sliced it just under the hook in the rim with an exacto knife. Used an old stem from a mavic tubeless rim, and covered it with a square of pipe wrap then punched a hole through the wrap. mounted my tire, slathered it with dishwashing soap, dumped in the latex, and filled it from the compressor. Poof! It seated and sealed up right away.

This was by far the easiest rim to seal for tubeless i’ve ever done – using either a traditional tubeless rim or a conversion. Though this was a UST tire. I think the secret really was the compressor. There is the tiniest little bubbling coming from the spot where this old tire hung on a nail, at 50psi. Took about an hour to do it all, then i’ve been fucking around with it for another hour dealing with the little leak, which may hold yet at 35psi.

This weekend going to try it on the Heckler’s wheels. This cost about $1 in parts for the pipe wrap and the mold builder, and $4 for the exacto knife.

What am i going to do with all the thorn resistant tubes that i will never use up?!?!?!?!?