Tight Tyres / Rims

Gippledocks said:

For five years my best bike has been running Panaracer Pasela TG 700C
x 28 (28 - 622 in the new money) tyres on Ambosio Super Elite rims.
I've finally used up my stock of Paselas and I'm more than ready for
a change.

I've been very happy with the tyre and rim combo from the riding point
of view over the years but the thing is it's always been a devil
getting the tyres off (getting them on is much easier - probably
scoring
somewhere between quite difficult and very difficult).

I've tried many sorts of lever (and broken a few) and I've tried
liberal amounts of soap and washing up liquid. Addressing the
blighters in my native Angle Saxon does little to help, though I'm
always obliged to
resort to it. The Paselas have seldom picked up punctures but I dread
the puncture fairy's visits.

I'm sure that this otherwise good combo includes either top of
tolerance rims or bottom of tolerance tyres or both, so one has to
go. The wheels seem good for a few years yet, so I'd be loath to
shell out to replace them.

So what does the team recommend (tyres, rims, tricks, what have you)?

I suspect Paselas are a tight fit on most rims, they are on my MA2 and
A719 too. The tyres are worth sticking with, IMO. I struggle but succeed
with fibreglass/nylon tyre levers from www.mwdyason.ltd.uk/shop.asp .
Might be worth trying a "VAR" special lever that is available from certain
other dealers.

~PB

Pete Biggs' p@honeydewbiggs{remove_melon}.tc said:

I suspect Paselas are a tight fit on most rims, they are on my
MA2 and A719 too.

MA2 rims were notorious for being on the large side.

I've used a lot of Paselas over the years, and have always found them to be
a reasonably slack fit, never requiring tools to fit or remove. In fact I
haven't found a tyre in comparable widths that's consistently slacker. No
doubt there are variations from batch to batch, but I'm inclined to suspect
the problem lies more with Richard's rims.

I'll second the suggestion of the VAR lever or one of its clones, and maybe
a pair of Open Pro rims when Richard's need replacing.

James Thomson

James Thomson said:

Pete Biggs' p@honeydewbiggs{remove_melon}.tc said:

I suspect Paselas are a tight fit on most rims, they are on my
MA2 and A719 too.

MA2 rims were notorious for being on the large side.

That's right but actually I meant MA3 there, which I don't think is on the
large side.

~PB

Pete Biggs said:

Gippledocks said:

So what does the team recommend (tyres, rims, tricks, what have you)?

I suspect Paselas are a tight fit on most rims, they are on my MA2 and
A719 too.

Correction: MA3.

Sorry, ~PB

Pete Biggs' p@honeydewbiggs{remove_melon}.tc said:

That's right but actually I meant MA3 there, which I don't think
is on the large side.

I've never used an MA3.

I'd like to pursue this, becasue it's interesting that our experience is so
very different.

Paselas have been my favourite tyres for commuting and touring for about
the last eight years. I've probably used about twenty of them in that time
in different widths in both 700c and 26", bought from half a dozen
different sources at different times, fitted to a variety of rims. They've
been consistently slack. On Open Pros (several different examples in
different drillings) the fit is so loose that the tyres have come clean off
the rims when suffering rapid punctures. In 26", they were the only tyres
(compared with various Hutchinsons, Vredesteins and Continentals) that I
could get on and off a particularly difficult pair of Matrix Rhyno (Trek
OEM) rims without tools.

I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with them -
particularly if you've tried many other tyres on this particular pair of
wheels, or if you've tried many Paselas on other rims, particularly Open
Pros. Can you recommend a tyre that you've found consistently easier to fit
on the same rims?

I was involved in a discussion of Pasela fit on the fixed wheel mailing
list a few months ago, agreeing with Roy Bird, who wrote:

I have a pair of 32mm (actually 28mm) [Panaracer Paselas] on
my touring bike and I like them too -even though I got a flat last
week! Another benefit is that they are easy to get on and off
without a battle. Levers are not required at all to remount.

Phil Chadwick wrote:

I've always found them a good (perfect?) fit.

I'm not familiar with Richard's Ambrosio Super Elite rims, though I've
toured long distances on the plain Elite - basically an Italian MA2 clone.

James Thomson

James Thomson said:

Pete Biggs' p@honeydewbiggs{remove_melon}.tc said:

That's right but actually I meant MA3 there, which I don't think
is on the large side.

On second thoughts, I don't have enough experience of the MA3 yet to be
sure of that.

Quoted message said:

I've never used an MA3.

I'd like to pursue this, becasue it's interesting that our experience
is so very different.

Paselas have been my favourite tyres for commuting and touring for
about the last eight years. I've probably used about twenty of them
in that time in different widths in both 700c and 26", bought from
half a dozen different sources at different times, fitted to a
variety of rims. They've been consistently slack.

I'm surprised, but also pleased that they can be an easy fit.

Quoted message said:

On Open Pros
(several different examples in different drillings) the fit is so
loose that the tyres have come clean off the rims when suffering
rapid punctures. In 26", they were the only tyres (compared with
various Hutchinsons, Vredesteins and Continentals) that I could get
on and off a particularly difficult pair of Matrix Rhyno (Trek OEM)
rims without tools.

I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with them -
particularly if you've tried many other tyres on this particular pair
of wheels, or if you've tried many Paselas on other rims,
particularly Open Pros. Can you recommend a tyre that you've found
consistently easier to fit on the same rims?

I'm a newcomer to Paselas and I've not had the particular rims I mentioned
long either. I just have one Pasela TG 32 and one in 35mm. I can't
remember now which rim/tyre I had more problems with (at least one was
extremely tight), but neither was easy and I had to use a lever to *fit*
the tyres -- something I rarely resort to with any tyres. Note that A719
is a relatively wide rim, and I tried both tyre widths on it.

Open Pro is relatively easy to fit any tyre to. I have OPs on my road
bike (but my Paselas are too wide for this bike). Tyres that fit very
easily on these rims in my experience are Vittoria Open Corsa CX 23 and
Schwalbe Blizzard Kevlar 25 (discontinued?).

I will do some more experimentation when an opportunity arrises, but it
might it might be some long time before I take both sets of wheels off
both bikes at the same time and feel like switching tyres, etc. (I have
some other spare tyres to try on MA2/A719 as well). Should be
interesting, though :-)

~PB

I scribbled:

Quoted message said:

(I have some other spare tyres to try on MA2/A719 as well). Should be
interesting, though :-)

Dd it again, I mean MA3... though I do have some MA2 wheels as well.

Quoted message said:

~PB

"Gippledocks" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

For five years my best bike has been running Panaracer Pasela TG 700C x
28 (28 - 622 in the new money) tyres on Ambosio Super Elite rims. I've
finally used up my stock of Paselas and I'm more than ready for a change.

I've been very happy with the tyre and rim combo from the riding point of
view over the years but the thing is it's always been a devil getting the
tyres off (getting them on is much easier - probably scoring somewhere
between quite difficult and very difficult).

Do you push the bead away from the rim all the way round and press in the
valve after you have inserted the first tyre lever? When you say it they
are easier to get on than off it suggests the bead isn't released.

DavidR said:

Do you push the bead away from the rim all the way round and press in the
valve after you have inserted the first tyre lever?

Thanks for the suggestion. Your method isn't my usual, so I shall make
a point of trying it.

Richard