it seems like if you peel the tire away at the seams and use a little rubber material to cover it and do a 1/2 decent job it will work fine. and if you welded the joint in the bead it would probably work, even if it ruined a small section of tyre… you would have to rebuild that anyways.
I e-mailed Ben about the tire. Maybe I should have asked more specific questions, I asked him if it was two tires joined together and how he did it. This was his response.
so now I am not sure if it is pneumatic or not.
it sounds like it might even be tubeless
he took the bead off and glued the edges to the rim…
hmmmmmm
looks like he is riding a solid tire, seems to me like there would be much better sources of rubber than cutting up a couple expensive tires.
It is pretty warm today and it finally stopped raining so I am going to find a park and try building my test tire today.
Could you potentially make a folding tire instead of a wire bead tire? That way you could still have a pneumatic but you wouldn’t need such a hard bead?
folding tire is the plan. Using multiple loops of braided fishing line for the bead.
ooooh the sun just came out, time to find a park bench and get to work.
I will tell you all how the test tire came out tonight.
A simpler route would be to just buy a 36 inch tire and cut a few inches out and reattach…
Got a question: what overall tire diameter are you shooting for?
The 36" tires actually are 36" OD when inflated. Do you think you’ll wind up with a 32", or some other OD?
Made the test (26") tire today. It took a lot longer to make than I thought it would, especially to make the bead. It was also really hard to work with light material outside in the wind…
I didn’t do any precise measurements when building it and just put it all together as strait as I could with cold fingers while everything was flapping in the wind. Maybe I should get an apartment, it would have been a lot easier indoors.
anyway I got the tire built up and it looks as good as I could have hopped. It has a perfectly round profile (I was concerned that it would be flat and wide) and everything seems to hold together just fine.
I pumped it up to 40 PSI and went for a ride. Feels like a lightweight slightly lumpy high pressure tire. I will put the unicycle seat back on and lower the pressure tomorrow to see how it handles with less air and how well it stands up to some hopping.
It is WAY lighter than my Gazz with downhill tube setup, I will eventually sneak in to a grocery store and stick it on a produce scale to see how much it weighs. It’s width is 2 3/8" ± 3/8" on a 46mm rim.
But the question is how do you make it seamless and strong and what do you do with the bead.
It will probably end up being between 31.5 and 32".
I have a 36" Nimbus SE rim that got knocked out of round and has a big crack at the third spoke hole from the seam. I am planning on cutting the rim to remove a section with 4 spoke holes including the cracked one and re-pin it. I am going to try to slowly bend the rim into a slightly tighter loop with a car jack and 2x4 rig so the ends mostly line up before pinning. I am waiting for KOXX to release their 32h hub before I start this project, and a place to work would help too.
I decided to try building a tire first to see if it was doable before tackling something like re-shaping a rim. I think I am going to aim for 2" wide tire when I build one for the 32 (31.5).
not that it’s any of my business at all, but where do you live? i mean, i know, somewhere in saskatchewan, but i hope you have a dorm room or something.
Saskatchewanian, your outdoor fabrication skills are amazing and thrifty, right down to the use of the grocery store scale. You gotta get a camera so we can see your latest vulcanizalicious tire.
Brycer1968
Thanks Brycer. I have a cell phone with a crappy camera but I can’t figure out how to get the pics to my computer. The bluetooth won’t connect.
And joshben: I am actually in new Brunswick at the moment. I have been on the road since the start of September. Living in my truck out of choice although I was hopping to have a job by now.
Living in a vehicle can be a great experience. You get to be somewhere new every night if you want and there is nothing tying you down. It hasn’t gotten cold yet but I wish it would.
Peace
ERIC
Last I heard, he was in a car in Quebec, or at least somewhere out east.
Pumped it up to 60 PSI, no creaks or pops or anything. I then brought it down to 20 PSI and hopped up and down a curb a few times. It felt surprisingly normal, a bit like a CC.
I then let all the air out and was mildly surprised that it held its shape, the 24" tread did not compress the tire. I took it off the rim and it was not stuck to the tube at all and still looked like a tire. I folded it like a folding tire, it was a bit stiff but not bad and took it to Sobeys and weighed it.
510g not bad at all. You could probably make a 700g 36er tire using this method.
I tried peeling the casing apart and was not able to with my fingers. I tried peeling the tread off and was able to peel the edge but not the middle where I rode on it.
Overall the test tire has exceeded my expectations in almost every way. It also makes me wonder why other people weren’t making lightweight 36er tires.