A customer brought in the rear wheel of a Cosmic Pro Carbon SL UST for me to work on.
The front wheel's tubeless tire came off by hand without much trouble,
but the rear wheel just wouldn't budge no matter how hard he tried, so he brought it in.
I recently made a custom tool just for this—one that hooks into the bead without damaging the rim—
so by the time of the photo above, I'd already removed it.
Earlier I'd written that using a thinner aftermarket rim tape instead of the OEM tape might make it easier to remove,
and he wanted me to test that theory.
I removed the rim tape.
Sure enough, there's a warning that says "do not use anything other than genuine tape."
The specs also note that rim tape thickness must be within 0.2mm,
so thickness and ease of removal might actually be related.
I switched to Stan's rim tape.
It's about the same thickness as Mavic's OEM tape,
but since Mavic wraps theirs in two layers (three layers where they overlap),
the total thickness should be about half now.
...thinking about it more, I could have just peeled back
one layer of the original tape.
I mounted the tire and pressurized it to 7 bar (the max marked on the tire)
and removed it by hand—that's the state shown in the photo above.
The tape now conforms nicely to the rim shape.
I also kept the overlap around the valve hole pretty minimal.
Before the work, I couldn't remove it by hand either,
but now I can manage it somehow. However,
the customer still can't remove it by hand either way.
What's he supposed to do if this happens out on the road?
It does seem to be better than before, but...
Since the front wheel comes off by hand for the customer, there's clearly some unit-to-unit variation.
By the way,
I peeled off the Mavic rim tape and thought I'd try making a rhinoceros beetle out of it.
Hmm, it doesn't really look much like a rhinoceros beetle.
The front wheel's tubeless tire came off by hand without much trouble,
but the rear wheel just wouldn't budge no matter how hard he tried, so he brought it in.
I recently made a custom tool just for this—one that hooks into the bead without damaging the rim—
so by the time of the photo above, I'd already removed it.
Earlier I'd written that using a thinner aftermarket rim tape instead of the OEM tape might make it easier to remove,
and he wanted me to test that theory.
I removed the rim tape.
Sure enough, there's a warning that says "do not use anything other than genuine tape."
The specs also note that rim tape thickness must be within 0.2mm,
so thickness and ease of removal might actually be related.
I switched to Stan's rim tape.
It's about the same thickness as Mavic's OEM tape,
but since Mavic wraps theirs in two layers (three layers where they overlap),
the total thickness should be about half now.
...thinking about it more, I could have just peeled back
one layer of the original tape.
I mounted the tire and pressurized it to 7 bar (the max marked on the tire)
and removed it by hand—that's the state shown in the photo above.
The tape now conforms nicely to the rim shape.
I also kept the overlap around the valve hole pretty minimal.
Before the work, I couldn't remove it by hand either,
but now I can manage it somehow. However,
the customer still can't remove it by hand either way.
What's he supposed to do if this happens out on the road?
It does seem to be better than before, but...
Since the front wheel comes off by hand for the customer, there's clearly some unit-to-unit variation.
By the way,
I peeled off the Mavic rim tape and thought I'd try making a rhinoceros beetle out of it.
Hmm, it doesn't really look much like a rhinoceros beetle.