Sniffing Glue

I'm not much of a bike mechanic, but with the help of Joe at the shop I'm getting to know my way around the bike much better. After rolling my front tire last Sunday I had every intention to drop it off at the shop and let Joe glue it back on. But after some deep soul searching I figured it was time to figure out how to do this on my own.

After several days of reading articles on the web, seeing the many versions of glue jobs there are out there I settled in on a all in one process.

Took 3.5 tubes of glue overall. I think it would have been more if it were a new tire, from what I read the tire will soak up alot of glue with the first few coats.



This stuff drys fast! I went with 3 coats on the tire paying close attention to getting full coverage from edge to center.

Three coats on the rim. I was able to rotate from tire to rim, back to tire, back to rim and so on. By the time I finished spreading glue on one, the other was dry and ready for another.

Up next was what I read as the hard part, the part that can get out of control fast; getting the tire on the rim.

Being it was the tire I rolled it was stretched and went on easy when dry. I kept the tire on the rim all week to keep it that way. I did several practice re-mounts during the week using the techniques I had read.

As I began to attach my heart rate started to go up, what if I totally screw this up? What if I get glue all over the place? This could be a disaster! One last layer on the rim and I attached the tire right after.

All ended well, tire remount technique worked well, got the tire centered for the most part right away, and the tire is on the rim.

A bit messy in some places but not many. After all, this is not a beauty pageant, so who cares if a little excess glue is on the side wall in a few spots? I think for my first time it went OK. With 6 layers of glue, I hope this thing does not roll again!