Tubular Rim Tape or Glue

Tubular tape vs glue. How can it can help you get your tires on more easily, round and true without the lumps you get associated with gluing. The reason is when you use a double-sided 3m tape the backing remains on the top side of the tape and only bonds into the rim bed itself eg you don't remove that backing until after you've mounted the tire and got the tire true on to the rim. With gluing what happens is when you mount the tire the glue is on the tire itself and in the rim bed so the moment you put the tire on it's sticking. Then you start mounting the very sticky tire and at the last point when you're pulling the tire over it creates a flat spot so the tire is effectively wonky and bonded straight away. Click to see the tape

The process for taping allows the unbonded tyre a chance to inflate it deflate then adjust to make sure it's totally true. It's a bit like putting your jumper over your shirt and the arms get piled up under the jumper so all you do is shake them down and get your shirt nice and straight underneath your jumper now imagine you're shirt has glue on it and your jumper has glue on it as well what that would feel like, it's not even it's not smooth it's not round. Tape has come so far over the past five years that the aerospace industry use it to bond planes together the building industry use it to mount windows on high-rise building. The peel rating, temperature rating the shear force load rating are much much higher than glue, they wouldn't dream of gluing a window onto a high-rise building anymore little own apply glue with a toothbrush by wiping around the edge of a previously glued rim with dirt and people will mount tires back on top of the glue and the dirt with all the porous surface. This ends up with a bond contact area reduction of up to ten fifteen twenty percent because of the fact that the glue is not even. With tape you get an even surface every time you start this is just an easy comparison to look at a clean surface that you would get once you remove the tape comparably to a glued surface which is a nightmare to clean takes probably three to four times as long to put a tire on and doesn't have the shear load rating and the temperature rating of the new 3m tapes so the reason I bought a thousand rolls of this tape. Tubulars have been getting overtaken by clinchers by everyone except the pro athletes 99% of pro athletes use tubules like this one here simply because they're faster now there's a lot of hype around tubeless technology not tubular and someone forgot to tell the pros about that because the pros are all still using these and for very good reason the weight reduction in a tubular is around 25% even up to 30% sometimes and all that weight saving is in the outside of the rim which is the most critical part of the rotational mass and the rolling resistance is amazing on tubular so not many pros are using tubeless and if they are it's probably for marketing reasons I think tubular is you know an amazing advantage for it for any athletes you know you don't be a pro you can be an age group but that's trying to you know beat their PB or beat their best mate and those gains are there to be had. The only thin really holding tubular back is glue so when people have an easy safe option instead of glue and I think people will start to come back to tubs but I'm not against clinchers at all I love clinches but when you're at the pointy end of the stick and you're trying to get every game possible this is the biggest game changer. My goal over the next few years is to bring back tubulars because it's not a dirty word. It's the the fastest technology and it's been around I think it's probably because it's been around for you know fifty or a hundred years or more but it's become looked upon as old technology and glueing is old but taping is not. 3m tapes are amazing there's a bond rating difference underneath of ten percent so it's 100 percent rating underneath and then I do a 10 to 15 percent reduction on the top so what that means is when you get a puncture or something like that you can pull the tire off and the rim will still have nice sticky tape left on it so when you put a tire back on you can get home or finish the race with no problems whereas with glue it's going to be bone dry when you pull that off and then you put a tire back on and you're not going to get any adhesion so you've got a tire that can potentially come off. I've also redone my molds for a much deeper tire bed which provides a bonding surface area increase of probably 30 to 40 percent. The tape is specifically made for my rims so it's one of the widest tapes on the market at 24mm and I've also made a smaller 20mm one for people with older style rims but won’t sell the 16mm ones as these are too narrow for my liking. Please send feedback because I want to know what people are thinking and generally just want to help bring tubulars back so people can have all the advantage without the hassle. I hope that helps and call me anytime or email carbon bike wheels.