Finally dug myself out from under my pile of work, at least for the time being, and had the evening free to give these TireBalls a go.

First order of bidness was to inflate. I will say, that if you have a compressor or a nitrogen tank, or something, their little needle valve regulator is shweeeet! It made setting the pressure on the like 70 ***** very easy and quick. So I'd say spring for that while you are at it. I mean, you're already spending a small fortune anyway, what's a few more bucks.

 

They include a silicon oil in a squirt bottle, you need to coat the inside of the tire carcass with that real good, after you clean it. Then put a clamp on the sidewall to hold the ***** in place as you place them in the inside. The rear cells are oval shaped so they need to go in a certain way. Keep the needle valve always oriented to the same side.




Lube up each cell with the silicon oil as you put them in, this will reduce friction and help eliminate cell failure.




Clean up the rim real good, then cover the spokes with tape, they recommend 5 wraps. I used some black pvc goo in the old 2nd rim lock hole and the tube valve hole before I put on the tape. Hopefully when that hardens it will provide a good seal against water and grit entering. That stuff is the enemy of the TireBall cells because as it rubs around in there it will wear a hole in them. That's also the reason for the silicon oil, to provide lubrication. I'm just running 1 rim lock now with these which you can see below. While it's not hard to put the tireball filled tire on with one rim lock, I think it would be pretty difficult with two.




Ready to go on:

 

They provide a 2nd lube which is water-based, you use this on the bead itself. Don't use the silicon oil because it lasts too long and will make the tire more likely to slip on the rim. The water based lube will evaporate.




Start at the rim lock and push the tire on, position the lower bead below the rim lock of course, push it on as far as you can with just your hands.



When it won't go any more, use your tire irons to pop the lower bead the rest of the way over.




For that last part of the job, a tire iron like this one from Motion Pro really works well:




The curved part works great for putting the leverage right where it's needed to get the lower bead to pop over the upper rim, even though the upper bead and tire ***** are in the way.

Almost done, but the hard part is next.

 

It's hard because you are essentially installing a fully inflated tire. And that makes it hard because it's really tough to get the bead to pop over the rim because it's difficult to get the opposite side of the bead pushed far enough down into the rim well in order for that to go.

But no job is too hard if you have the right tool. So again, another recommendation is to get the bead seating tool from TireBalls. Again, you're spending a small fortune anyway, so what's a few more bucks. And it works really well and will save you bloody knuckles and much cursing.

Here it is in action:




With the bead pushed down, the opposed side popped right over, no problem.




All done, except for wiping off the lube.




The bead seated fine, the lube helped with that, too. Ready to put on and never have to worry about a flat again.

 

Same procedure for the front.






The front was actually harder to install, smaller diameter so less room to work, and some of the ***** wanted to pop out as I was forcing the tire over the rim. I ended up using 1 less cell than recommended, 34 instead of 35. They give you 40 for the front. I think it will be fine, though.


So there we go, TireBalls front and rear, my luxury item for this year. It'll be nice not carrying tubes, pumps, and tire irons on the trail now, nor have to worry about flats while racing or just trail riding. You could even rip a sidewall and these should still survive to get you home. Only a mousse would be more failure proof, but it lacks some nice features of TireBalls, such as it wears out fairly quickly and you can't adjust the pressure. I think I will be happy with these. Hope to test them out some tomorrow.

Not recommended for long road trips, not DOT approved. But they should suit the bulk of my riding perfect.

 

Hey Nobrakes, I truely hope that you are happy playing with your *****, but it really really looks like alot of work (not to mention the money). I can only imagine how much work it will be to change air pressure level if I wanted to go on a longer road ride and then decide to air down for a knarley hill climb. I guess it will work for you though because you use your bike mainly for racing or aggressive trail ridding. It would be very nice not to have to worry about a flat tire.
Please let us know how it rides on the road if you can get a chance.
Thanks.

 

Great write-up. It's nice to actually see how tire ***** work and how they are installed. Let us know how they work out.

 

Not much work really, at least not with that bead tool they have. I actually found it easier to install these than with a regular tube, believe it or not. I'm usually pretty good at changing tires and tubes, but the last time I did it, I ruined not one, but TWO tubes. That was a first for me, but that one sealed the deal for me for getting these, I was thinking there has to be a better way. There is. It's TireBalls.

Also, you don't air these down, you set the pressure when you install them. Every six months or so, you pull the tire off and reset the pressure. That's likely time to change to a new tire anyway, so in reality even then it's not that much work since you'd have the tire off anyway.

As far as airing up, for off-road you really only want about 10lbs of pressure in the rear and around 12lb in the front. It still boggles my mind that Deej runs 30lbs of pressure off-road, I can only imagine that makes up for his too soft suspension. At any rate, I've done at least 100 miles road on hot pavement with that pressure and it works just fine. People get weird about thinking they need high pressure all the time. If your buzzing down I-95 at 85 MPH, no I don't recommend it, but if you are hitting the back roads to get to the trails at 55 or 60, or commuting to work through town, you'll be fine.

Of course, if you follow my advice and your tires pop after 10 miles, well, it's your fault for listening to me, I rarely know what I'm talking about.

 

Be interesting to see how these work out, even though I won't ever use them for trail riding.

 

Now you are tempting me, but I'm going to hold off for a while and see how they work out for you over this summer. I held off on the tubliss and I'm glad I did. Besides I gotta save some of my disposable coin for a little ride in the Dominican Republic I'm planning for early summer before hurricane season.

Keep us posted.