Tight Tires - SO Frustrating!

[teawoman]

you get it in there and just push a lever up and presto! (or schrader!) the tire is off.

Hee hee! I'm feeling silly enough today to giggle at that!

[Starfish]

This is going to be my official excuse!

Next time I need to get a tight tire on, I'll try out all your great suggestions. I really think part of the problem is my little hands. My ring finger is a size 4-1/2, which is pretty small. I think my thumbs would be about a size 6. So, small weak hands plus smallish Michelin tires and possibly biggish rims means Sara needs help with her tires!!!

OK, girl. My ring finger is a 5, my middle finger is not quite 3" long (despite all the exercise it gets ), and I can barely reach my brakes despite shims. You can change your tires!!! (Get the right tire/rim combo, though.)

[SadieKate]

I have very small hands also and can mount tires as long as the tire/rim combo is right.

[SouthernBelle]

OK, girl. My ring finger is a 5, my middle finger is not quite 3" long (despite all the exercise it gets ), and I can barely reach my brakes despite shims. You can change your tires!!! (Get the right tire/rim combo, though.)

This, strangely, inspired me to measure my middle finger and it is about 2 5/8" long.

[melissam]

Has anyone tried mounting the Continental Home Trainer Tire?

I knew I was in trouble when I had a hard time getting one side of the tire onto the rim. The second bad sign was when I had the first half mounted, I wanted to slide the tire around to line up the logo with the hole for the valve stem. The thing wouldn't budge. Getting the whole tire mounted onto the rim was a battle of wills, between the tire and myself. And yes, I used tire levers. Even so, I think I got my heart rate into the Zone 5 range.

The real bummer was that once I had it mounted, I pumped up the tire only to find out that the @#!%&* tube wouldn't hold air.

The "best" part was trying to get the tire off the rim. Put the tire lever in, tried to pry the bead out of the rim, and no go. This is truly the Tire from He!l. I finally had to resort to using a good old fashioned screwdriver. I swear, at that point, I didn't care if the screwdriver punctured the tube, tire, whatever, as long as it didn't puncture my already aching thumbs.

Needless to say, my old tire and a new tube is now mounted on my trainer bike.

[kenshinvt]

There actually is a great device you can use to get tires on much easier if you don't have the hand strength to generate a lot of leverage--some tires are just really hard to get on certain rims regardless of what technique you use.

It's called the Kool Stop Tire Bead Jack:


The straight end rests on your rim. The swinging arm goes on the edge of the tire. Then you push it forward and the swinging arm pulls the edge of the tire over the rim. It's ideal for getting that really hard to move last few inches of tire over the rim.

I use it for tubeless mountain bike tires which by their nature are extremely difficult to get on a rim. But it also works fine for road bike tires! It's about 10 bucks and you can find it at a lot of retailers. I got mine from jensonUSA.com which you can find it on there for about that price if you search "bead jack."

You should still know how to get a tire on by hand, however, as it is too big to carry on the road. One nice thing to know is that "folding bead" tires get much easier to put on and take off after you mount them a couple of times. So use it to get them on there that first difficult time.