I thought I'd waste many hours of my weekend installing my new Tufo Jet Specials onto my race wheels. I guess that was okay, because I needed to fill time as Carolyn was busy getting herself ready for her first business trip at her new company. She loves her job! I wish I could say the same for myself. The only thing I like about my job is the paychecks.....and I could love them more!
Anyway, getting the tires off the wheels was easier said than done. After wrestling the tires off I was left with a sticky nasty residue that I absolutely had to remove!
Getting years of goo and crust off of the wheels was a combination of mechanical separation and chemical goodness brought on with lacquer thinner. The peeling back of layers was tough on the old fingers, but the thinner did a number on drying out my fingers, with an added bonus of taking the red color from the shop rags and transferring it to my fingers! They still aren't the same. As you can see the results speak for themselves. These are 8 year old Lew Composite racing wheels. Still among the lightest, if not the most aerodynamic wheels ever made!
Once cleaned up I tackled the task of installing the new blue and yellow very under the radar tires! Here is where I took a shortcut. I know that there is the argument that traditional glue is stronger and less likely to have the tire separate from the wheel. Since this was my first time, and didn't want to chance ruining these expensive tires, I opted to use Tufo Extreme gluing tape. The tape comes from the Czech Republic, so the box reads, LEPICI PASKA PRO SILNICNI GALUSKY! That must be good right? Actually, the tape went on good and was very easy to use and center the tire on the wheel. The most difficult thing was trying to stretch the tire onto the wheel. After stretching the tire a couple times and a bit of finessing they went on and seem to hold onto the wheel very nicely. I figure that time trialing is mostly straight line I'm not too worried about them peeling off the wheels. The best part is after three days, they are still holding air! As you can see they look quite fetching on their wheels when you add the SRAM red cassette, they are quite colorful too!
Wow! You did an amazing job on cleaning up those wheels - very impressive. I am quite curious though about your fingers - think you should have posted a picture of them as well! :) By the way I love that you posted the Czech from the glue!
ReplyDeleteYou did an awesome job, angel! I didn't see how nasty those wheels looked before you started to clean them. Amazing!!!
ReplyDeleteI was curious about what the Czech actually said. First I googled it, and your blog came up as the first hit :-) Then I used Google's language tools and learned that it wasn't nearly as interesting a translation as I hoped. All it says is "Adhesive tapes for ROAD Galuška". That's kind of mundane. LEPICI PASKA PRO SILNICNI GALUSKY seems much more exciting. Either way, glad it worked for you. I agree with Gayle, though. I want to see the fingers!
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