In my ongoing battle with trying to set up tubeless mountain bike tires I have been thwarted at almost every turn. Only the Bontrager TLR and Mavic/Hutchinson tubeless ready set ups were anything resembling success. The one set up that had continuously eluded me was the Stan's conversion.
I even had the proper Stan's rims and yellow tape installed, courtesy of Bike 29. So I knew I hadn't ran a foul of some ghetto tubeless rim strip or the wrong rim. Still, something wasn't right.
When I went to Decorah, I inquired of several of the locals about their tubeless set ups, as I knew that they ran them up there to great success. (Notice: the word "success" is coming up a lot here!) I even bought some Stan's milky magic from Deke figuring I would benefit from positive mojo if I did so. I did more research on the inner-web-o-sphere and visited Stan's site trying to put together all the missing pieces.
Well, last night was the night it all came together. The little secret applied here, the homemade applicator I made from a Coke bottle, and the satisfying "pop" of beads setting up all lead to my very own Stan's tubeless conversion success story.
Yay!
So, does that mean that Guitar Ted will now become assimilated into the masses of devout tubeless believers? Hmm..........well, only if it actually works! That's what this Texas trip is going to prove out to me. If tubeless doesn't leave me stranded, leave me walking miles from my car, and doesn't make me mess with gooey-glop in the dirt while I switch back to a tube trail side then maybe.........just maybe, me love you long time. We'll see about that though.
Until then, I'll test ride the set up from last night and hope we get our car back today, like the body shop promised us. We're still not cleared for take off just yet. Even the best laid plans can go astray. Stay tuned!
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