Tubeless Rims

[Richard Stum]

Can one take an ordinary 10 or 15 year-old rim that’s fairly narrow, maybe 15 or 16 mm inside dim., and tape it off to become a tubeless rim? Or is there more to it than that?

Cheers,
Richard Stum
Mobile 435-851-9558

Living & Working in the Mountains of Central Utah

Rap Sheet:
RandoRichard.com (blog)
rando_richard (Strava)
eogear.com (cycling bags)
kgear.com (camera bags)
@eogear.usa (Instagram & Twitter)
richardwstum, eoGEAR or KinesisPhoto (Facebook)

Excuse any typos or brevity of message as this was input on an itty-bitty iPhone or iPad keypad or, worse yet, transcribed through Siri.

[Ken Moss]

No, it will blow off, so that's quite dangerous. Modern rims have a shelf on the sidewall to support the tire and that's necessary for safety. Rims + tires need to be tubeless compatible.

In the early days of tubeless, it was common to do this with MTB wheels and it works fairly well below 20 PSI but there's no reason to do it these days with wide availability of good tubeless-compatible rims.

 

BTW, I've encountered 2 people this season who crashed when their tubeless tire blew off, from over-inflating their tires. So a reminder for everybody that tubeless requires lower pressures and please talk to your bike shop about appropriate pressures for your setup.

-Ken

[Richard Stum]

Thanks for the info. I have a friend that was asking. But he is only running 25mm tires right now, which is kinda narrow for tubeless anyway. 

I was recently pointed to this site for determining correct PSI of tires: https://vittoria.com/pages/tire-pressure

~ RR

--
Disclaimer: cycling is enjoyable, but it can also be dangerous. We make no claim that our routes are free from vehicles, bad roads, dogs etc.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
• Salt Lake Randonneurs > http://www.saltlakerandos.org/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Utah Randonneuring" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to utah-randos...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/utah-randos/13fe6ea1-4bb0-4010-84ac-afd790da0751n%40googlegroups.com.

[Richard Stum]

That site recommended between 60-65 PSI for my 28mm tubeless tires.

[Matthew Lefthand]

All depends on the wheel if 25mm is too little or not. And your weight, because the require psi may not be reached especially with hookless. 

Tubeless is great if you play by the rules.  But dangerous if not. 

On Aug 12, 2025, at 4:18 PM, Richard Stum <richa...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/utah-randos/CADS3OM9nR36v7WBA4qYDHNVNS_ok8aqsHHOSW57JTL-zya4tXw%40mail.gmail.com.