Sealing wheel halves

[Max Power]

Our wheel design this year is such that we need to pull our multi-piece wheels apart to change tyres.

Is anyone here in the same situation? What do you do to get an airtight seal?

I am thinking of using an o-ring sitting in a grooved section. Anyone know where to get an o-ring this big?

[Max Power]

Our wheel design this year is such that we need to pull our multi-piece wheels apart to change tyres.

Is anyone here in the same situation? What do you do to get an airtight seal?

I am thinking of using an o-ring sitting in a grooved section. Anyone know where to get an o-ring this big?

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

Applerubber.com

That's not a bad, if you can get them to seal well. It's always a pain to get our tires mounted, and sometimes they bend our shells.

[Evan]

That's an interesting idea, but I'd be worried about it giving problems, both in working on the wheels and getting them togethor properly, and also in them leaking later on. An O-ring that large would be very tricky to align and seat properly while assembling the wheels. We have had to take our wheels appart before, and find that silicone is the best solution, and not too hard to get off the wheel as needed, although we don't have to take appart for every tyre change. I'd just try to find a good shop that has a 'touchless' machine (I think they're called)... only the operator has to touch it once, and if they're good, no worries at all.
-Evan Martin
Ryerson FSAE

[Colin]

we have to pull our rims apart to get the tyres on and we haven't had any problems getting a seal except on some of the older rims that are a bit "bent" and then a bit of soapy water around the rim to find the leak and a bit of soft hammer work gets it to seal, you can get o'rings that big but most o'rings need to be squashed until they distort before they'll seal and I don't know if the relative softness of the tyre will allow this to happen, o'rings also need a proper seat that you will have to turn into the rim which may be a bit of a pain in the ass
good luck

[Andreas]

O-rings can be hard to find in that dimension and if you do they are probably very expensive. A more economical way is to use a "O-ring-string" which we used on our 2003 carbon/alu-wheel. You buy of a roll, cut it and glue the ends together. We used ordinary super glue with no problems. We turned a rectangular seat in the aluminium part and didn´t have any sealing problems, and we had just six bolts holding it togethet at a diametre of 300 mm

Andreas, Chalmers -02, -03

[The guru of guru's]

Hey Mr. Max what are your wheels made of? We just used silicone rubber last year on our mag ones and it worked really well. It was a last resort after the rubbers died.
Cheers
Dave.

[RaID]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The ghost who walks.:
Hey Mr. Max what are your wheels made of? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

both the wheel centre and spinning will be aluminium

[bigfella]

Standard practice at my weekend job (tyre joint) with tyres/rims that don't seal well is to stick a bit of black silastic, say the stuff for windscreens, on the tyre. Pop the tyre onto the rim and leave it for a while, it should seal up just fine.
Good luck!

[bigfella]

What we normally do at my work (tyre joint) with hard to seal rims is stick a bit of silastic on the tyre and bung it on the rim. Run it up to pressure and leave it. The downside is that when you go to get the tyre off, it'll take twice as much effort; this isn't an issue when you've got a tyre press sitting there waiting to be used. You could try using plain old soap, that usually helps to get a good seal.
Cheers