Hitchcocks Forum

I picked up my new bike today. Very happy, its great to be thumping down the road again. Only 15 miles as I wanted to get it in the garage, ACF-50'd, bolts checked, tool kit figured out etc.

This brings me to the tyres. AVONS marked tubeless. They have tubes for certain, you can see on the valve stems. Is this going back to the disaster the Bring My Wallet corporation visited on us where you can't plug a puncture and can't break the bead to change the tube either? Does anyone have any experience? Do I just need to get the wheels off, break the bead and get some lube in (no factory ever lubes tyres) or should I be looking at our hosts selection on TT rubber?

Cheers

Andy

There are no problems with tubes inside tubeless tyres. There was a long discussion on the forum about it a few months ago.

I think pretty well all modern bike tyres are tubeless, and will of course be fitted with tubes if fitted to a spoke wheel otherwise the air would leak past the spokes. It's perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. You can't plug a puncture in a tubed tyre obviously, you could carry tyre levers and a patch kit? Personally I carry a can of tyre foam (which has saved me a long walk once) and a mobile phone in case the tyre foam doesn't work, because if the tube has torn, it won't.

All of this applies to any bike with spoke wheels of course, not just Enfields.

A couple of things perhaps worth mentioning for when you fit new tyres though, I have seen some tyres supplied with labels stuck on the inside, these need removing obviously, and I always run talc over the tube to provide a little lubrication and help reduce chaffing, because in spite of the manufacturers saying it's okay to fit tubes, I'm not convinced that tubeless tyres are as smooth on the inside as tubed tyres were.

It might be worth pulling the tyres off to rust proof the inside of the rims, because they will rust, but personally I'd leave that till the tyres need changing.

TBH, I think I'd just go and play with the new bike and not worry about it. Enjoy.

Can you get the tubes out at the side of the road with levers though?

You can't on an F650, one nail and its a ride on the RAC truck.

Andy

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question tbh.

To get the tube out on any bike you need to break the bead, and to do that ideally you need the wheel laid on the floor.

Given that one of my other bikes with tubes in spoke wheels is a Harley, and I can't get the wheels out of that without a lift, attempting to repair a puncture at the side of the road is not something that would occur to me, hence the can of tyre foam. It's a temporary repair at best, but then so is a patched tube, I'd want to change either asap anyway.

You get a punture, you replace the tube, its fixed, you carry on riding and patch the old tube at the night halt. You get a punture you fill the tyre with gunk you limp home and repeat the job, having to bin the gunk filled tube. You get a puncture, the tubeless tyre has a safety bead that won't push off into the well, you call the RAC, they take all day to trailer the bike to their less than secure storage compound where it sits until they can be bothered to bring it to you. I'll try one in the garage where I have the full kit and let you know. Andy.

Fitting a tube in a tubeless tyre reduces the speed rating of the tyre to the next lower classification. Not a lot of people know that.

That's why I fit V rated tubeless tyres on my Enfield

Hi I was the OP for the tyre discussion a while ago. After much discussion I changed to Avons. Much better handling.. This was in prep for a long road trip I have planned. As an experiment I tried to change the tyres myself to see if it was possible to fix a puncture at the roadside.... in short.. No chance. Get good breakdown cover. I got the wheel off ok and broke the bead using my tyre levers (these are way too big to carry on the bike) then struggled for 20 mins to get the tyre off and the tube out. I put another hole in the tube. Didn't even try to get the new (tighter, less flexible) tyre on. I took the whole shebang to my dealer who fitted 2 tyres in 5 mins and only said" I told you so" once. Lesson learned.

I do normally fit my own tyres at home, partly because I like to clean off and treat any rust spots on the inside of the rim, and partly because I live 40 miles from my nearest motorcycle tyre fitter, I can change a tyre quicker than driving there and back.

There is definitely a knack, and it gets easier with practice, I put a new rear Avon on the Enfield last week in half an hour and I wasn't rushing.

The only one I've found that was a bit of a struggle was the rear Annekee on my Transalp, maybe the slight off road bias means they're stiffer?

One tip I've found invaluable is never try to fit a cold tyre, if you can't leave it out in the sun for an hour, stand it next to a fan heater. I've even been known to use my wife's hair drier to ease the last tight spot over the rim.


I still wouldn't try it at the side of the road though, like I said earlier, not all my bikes have easily detachable wheels. Plus I have decent tools at home, including a bead breaker and a good pair of car tyre levers, (originally from an FX4 Taxi if I remember correctly), plus a mini compressor to blow the tyre up after.

I want to say that as I've only had two punctures in over 40 years and I would guess well over 200,000 miles on two wheels that it seems a very slight risk to worry about,,,,,,,,,,

I want to say that, but that would be tempting fate, wouldn't it?