Tubeless Tires for Dummies

anatomy of a tubeless tire

Every day some unlucky staffer — usually the one who loses a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock tournament — is assigned to check a couple dozen entries in this blog to see whether the nominee is still live on the Web and to find a copy in archive.org if it isn't. Not long ago, the poor intern (it's usually an intern for some reason) ran across a post pretending to explain how to patch a tubeless tire on a wheelbarrow. For the most part, we objected to the eHow contributor's inability to craft coherent instructions, though we noted that she did manage to mention seating the tire bead in the wheel. Well, that post is gone, and the link redirects to what is arguably an even worse set of instructions for tubeless tires. It's "How to Inflate a Flat Tubeless Tire on a Riding Lawn Mower," written by Elizabeth Knoll in the days she called herself Robin Gonyo, and now residing at GardenGuides.com.

We aren't quite sure where Knoll got her instructions, but they were probably from Edmunds.com... except that the Edmunds article was about nothing more than checking tire pressure. So it appears that Elizabeth simply "winged it," perhaps adapting instructions for re-inflating a bicycle tire she found somewhere. We aren't sure... what we are sure about is that Knoll's instructions won't work. Here's why... these are her steps three through five:

"Turn on your air compressor and allow it to build up pressure. Remove the valve stem cover from the lawn mower tire and set aside... Check the recommended inflation pressure for your lawn mower tire. This information is usually on the side of the tire... Take the air hose and pressure the nozzle on the valve stem to begin filling the tire with air. "

Yeah, that's gonna work... as long as the tire bead is already seated in the rim. The problem being, of course, that almost every idiot knows how to inflate a tire. But seating a tubeless tire in the rim? Not so much.

The real problem? Our Dumbass of the Day (for the fourteenth time) didn't know enough to even realize that's what the OQ was asking! For what it's worth, we know how... Oh yeah, and there's this: we had to snicker at Elizabeth's step number one:

"Locate the puncture wound on your tire..."

The "wound"? really?

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DD - TIRES