We remove and fit a lot of tyres here at Beaulieu. With these volumes we inevitably spot a few common, and some quite uncommon, mistakes made by other fitters.
Let’s start with stickers inside tyres. Not a problem if you’re running tubeless, but even the smallest of stickers will chafe against an inner tube, wearing it away until it starts to lose air and the tyre goes down.
Wire wheels need a rimband to stop the spoke heads damaging the inner tube. Many wire wheels come with a hard plastic tape over the spokes that looks like it will do a great job of protecting the tube from those spoke heads. It doesn’t take long for that tape to harden and start to chafe at the tube. When fitting a tyre to a new wire wheel we always remove all traces of the tape and any stickers on the rim and fit a new rimband of the correct size.
As for an uncommon mistake, how about a loose spoke inside a tyre? Yes, we’ve seen it. A spoke had become detached and ended up between tyre and tube. How on earth this sharp bit of metal didn’t cause a major blow out is a mystery.
