[Critter Cameraman]

My buddy bought his first bike "used" to ride with his DH and Enduro racing son. It was a Salsa Fat Bike. Tires 26x4.0.

The tires were flat. I pulled tires and patched tubes. One tube had 8 patches and still does not hold air. You cannot find Fat Tire tubes anywhere in country and the manufactures of those tubes are not making them anytime soon and won't even take your $ for a backorder b/c they cannot keep up with supplying tubes for new bike production... ugh!

So, TREK has bought every mom and pop bike shop in Austin they can and I hear they are doing it across entire country... including my go to LBS "Bicycle Sport Shops" and all their locations. I find this sad, but I ride Trek so things could be worse I guess.

Anyhoo, I take rims and tires and tubes to TREK Austin, TX on Lamar and showed them my problem and they inspected rim and tire physically and looked it up online and said that it was a tubeless ready tire and rim and why don't I switch to tubeless... I said, "Great!" So they try and hard sell me on them setting it up and I said, "NO, I do all my own work" and they then sell me $50 worth of stuff and tell me how to setup it up.

I go home. Pull rim tape. Clean rim with alcohol. yadah, yadah, yadah and after getting blue sealant all over my house cannot get the tire to seat.

Next day leave message for Surly Tire company with questions. A week later they email me telling me that that tire and rim are NOT tubeless compatible and the LBS should have known this if they know what they are doing!

Sooooooo.... Is my tire now compromised because its interior is covered in blue Bontrager sealant and I will never be able to see or feel cactus or thorns properly again?
Does TREK owe me another tire?
Do they owe me a $50 refund on all the tubeless kit they sold me?
Do they owe me leather cleaning for having blue sealant all over my bone white leather couch that now looks like a Smurf was murdered on it??? I have no idea how it got on it, but it is dripped across it and won't come off and I am PISSED!
Should they have been able to tell the difference between tubeless and tubed rim and tires? Surly Tires says so!

I am trying to be fair, but I spent a day of my life with my God Son (explains couch) trying to make this work because the LBS told me it would after inspecting all tire and rim and selling me the kit to do it!

Thoughts?

 

[TwoTone]

They fact you even mention owing for a mess you made in your house screams........
That part aside based on the ridiculousness of the thought.
Trek owes you nothing, you may try to get the shop to refund the sealant and tape. That's about it.
Clean the tire off.

 

[Harold]

Sooooooo.... Is my tire now compromised because its interior is covered in blue Bontrager sealant and I will never be able to see or feel cactus or thorns properly again?

no. it's fine.

Does TREK owe me another tire?

no

Do they owe me a $50 refund on all the tubeless kit they sold me?

doubtful. what did you buy?

Do they owe me leather cleaning for having blue sealant all over my bone white leather couch that now looks like a Smurf was murdered on it??? I have no idea how it got on it, but it is dripped across it and won't come off and I am PISSED!

no. why was your dumb ass doing the job in the house? shouldn't be hard to figure out that this is potentially a messy job and that you should do it outside

Should they have been able to tell the difference between tubeless and tubed rim and tires? Surly Tires says so!

what exactly were you dealing with here? even proper tubeless-ready fatbike gear can be difficult to set up. fatbike tires are just big and floppy and don't like to cooperate. there may be things you can do to get parts that aren't tubeless-ready to install as tubeless ready, but that increases the challenge as well as the potential for making a mess.

trying to set up ANY used tires as tubeless is going to be exceptionally difficult. holes from punctures. sidewall flex making the casing more porous. and so on and so forth.

you really ought to have had the shop do the setup on this one.

 

[127.0.0.1]

they offered set up, you declined:

I do all my own work
----------------

So, any mess or frustration, all on you.

 

[Glide the Clyde]

Lol

 

[SqueakyWheel73]

Well it sucks that the bike shop gave you bad info, but this is one of the more entertaining rants that I have read lately. I'd love to hear what the bike shop says if you ask them to cover damage to your sofa!

 

[watermonkey]

Use the rest of the sealant that you can't use on the non-tubeless setup to finish Smurfifying your couch.

 

[eshew]

Chalk it up to a learning experience. I do all my own work as well, and I have learned from my mistakes. Which is why I'm sometimes such an accomplished bike mechanic and other times a student.

It's on you for believing the bike shop, no one is perfect & mistakes can happen. Always double check what a shop tells you. Bike shop employees are a cross cut of the general population which means about 40% of them are idiots at some point in time or another.

 

[kapusta]

Why on earth were you doing a tubeless conversion on your couch?

What tire and rim do you have?

 

[bingemtbr]

I have 2 fat bikes. I can and have installed tubeless on all my other bikes except the fatties. Those I take to the shop. Its a two person task.

My advice: take the bike to the shop and have them install the tires. Why? Well I have two 2015 Specialized Fatboys. The base models. Both came with Specialized (wire bead) Ground Control 4.6" tires. These tires are not tubeless compatible--it says so on the side walls. However, my lbs (and other home mechanics) have successfully converted these non-tubeless designed tire to work as tubeless. I rode these tires as tubeless for 2 years, then they wore out and I replaced them with proper fatty tires with "2Bliss" stampled on the side walls.

Regarding the white leather couch---DUDE!! That sucks! I hope your significant other rides.

 

[brex17]

If competent, the person doing the work would have known if the tire and wheel were compatible or not.

The person that did the work is to blame for the error, top to bottom.

 

[HerrKaLeu]

There are FB groups called "WTF of bike mechanics" et al. I bet we will see their version of the story there soon. Many of those WTF stories start with a customer that says they do their own work..

Obviously the LBS gave you bad advice if they physically saw the rim and tire. But that advice was free, so you can get refund for that.

Best to write that off as tuition paid. I doubt they would buy back the supplies you bought and used up.

And don't build bikes in the living room. It always gets messier than what a pro in a YT video shows.

Look into split tube setup for not TR equipment.

 

[bcriverjunky]

It's all on you..

 

[TwoTone]

There are FB groups called "WTF of bike mechanics" et al. I bet we will see their version of the story there soon. Many of those WTF stories start with a customer that says they do their own work..

Obviously the LBS gave you bad advice if they physically saw the rim and tire. But that advice was free, so you can get refund for that.

Best to write that off as tuition paid. I doubt they would buy back the supplies you bought and used up.

And don't build bikes in the living room. It always gets messier than what a pro in a YT video shows.

Look into split tube setup for not TR equipment.

How is it obliviously bad advice? Hundreds of people have gone tubeless with none tubeless rims and tires.

They offered to do it, he said no "I do my own work", so they sold him what they would have used to do it. It's not their fault OP didn't know how to do it.

There is only one person at fault for this entire mess and it's the OP.

 

[SingleSpeedSteven]

So just to get a timeline on your issues here:

• LBS Googles something that you could have easily Google'd yourself. Gives you an "incorrect answer" (fat bikes can usually be set up tubeless, even without tubeless rims/tires)
• LBS sells you stuff to do a tubeless setup because you're a DIY type of guy
• You email Surly and wait a week to get info you could have found on Google
• You are a sloppy mechanic and got sealant all over your couch. I'm not even sure how this is possible...…
• You can't figure out how to setup tires tubeless
• You want Trek to give you lots of monies

Does this not sound completely ridiculous to you? I have a few drops of Orange Seal on a pair of my Vans from setting up tires tubeless. I don't expect Jenson to refund me. I have spilled some oil on my garage floor doing a change in my truck before. I don't think O'Reilly's owes me a refund.

You're crazy. Get over it and pay a shop to do your work if you can't even figure out how to set up a tubeless tire.

 

[beastmaster]

It's all on you..

Or rather his couch! Haha!

 

[mlx john]

So they try and hard sell me on them setting it up and I said, "NO, I do all my own work" and they then sell me $50 worth of stuff and tell me how to setup it up.



Thoughts?

This part of your interaction with the bike shop is the crux of the story.

The fact that you saw it as a "hard sell" speaks volumes. It's not easy to convert fat bike wheels to tubeless regardless if the the tires/rims are tubeless ready. I've done it myself and seen it done many times with tubeless compatible parts and non-tubeless compatible parts. (worked as a shop rat for many years before starting my own bike repair business).

Instead of a hard sell, they were trying to save you from yourself, but your "NO, I do all my own work" attitude sealed your fate.

The fact that you capitalized "NO" has me thinking that their perception of your attitude was not very favorable, but what do I know, I wasn't there.

 

[WHALENARD]

Use the rest of the sealant that you can't use on the non-tubeless setup to finish Smurfifying your couch.

Problem solved.

Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using Tapatalk

 

[127.0.0.1]

 

[Critter Cameraman]

Wow! Amazing how much love you can get on one post and how much hate on another ;-P

• I could not google the info as Surly took it off their website. So, I went to my pro LBS.
• The head of the service dept inspected rim and tire and looked up on internet and said he found it (not on Surly's website, but it is reasonable to believe the LBS has access to better info than me both online and experience with rims and tires)
• He said I could do it easily with his kit if I followed his instructions. This was seriously erroneous info, just as his info on the rim and tire were erroneous.
• I did the work outside. But if you try for hours to inflate a tire that is incompatible with the system and is full of sealant you will get sealant all over the place which you would not do if you had the correct parts.
• For those who missed the humor about the couch I guess you believe in Smurfs too?? I am not sure if everyone should have a beer before reading posts or drink less beer before reading posts, but I thought I was being OBVIOUSLY tongue in cheek when I included the murder scene of said Smurf, apologies if some believed a Smurf had been injured in the writing of this post.