Right 
haha! Maybe I’ll go with hot pink! (Not)
i work in a bike shop and i deal with setting the beads on rims every day.
while i have never seen an “x” airfoil in real life, from what i have heard on this fourm i dont quite belive the tube story. i find it hard to belive that everyone on this website is incapible of mountin a tire on a rim correctly. tubes , if they are bad will usually blow out on the seam, not herniate.
i refuse to buy a x airfoil rim, and from this point on, untill this is solved , i wont order from udc anymore. bedford is my new guy
I risk coming off as a dunce perhaps but I must ask:
Somewhere in these airfoil threads there is discussion of herniated tubes blowing tires off the rims…is this really possible?
In my thinking a weak tube wall would not herniate at all if it’s snugly confined to the inside of a mounted tire, but only when inflated in the open air. My mind boggles at the idea that a thin spot in a tube can herniate inside a tire and force a bead off the rim. 
The defecive tubes (which were confirmed defective) were blowing out at the stem, or stem area, and according to John D at UDC, since going back the the coker tubes, there have been no (reported) problems.
I just today placed my order for a new coker (radial 36) with the new airfoil, and John D. says, without reservation, that he will replace the tube , tire, and/or rim if there is any problem. He says he rides his 36-er with the "X’ rim and keeps his tire inflated to 40psi and has had absolutely no problems. I’m hoping for the same!
hmmm…i think i’m on idiorhythmic’s side for this one…the tube doesn’t support any sort of load inside the tire, just makes the inside of the tire/rim system airtight. so, it shouldn’t be able to push the tire off the rim unless the pressure is simply too high.
and terry, you mention that the problem John admitted to was the defective tubes failing at the stem area…but how does this explain the instances of tires blowing off at the bead?
and finally, my complaint about the current airfoils is not that they arguably have a blowout potential but that i can’t run any tire that i want, but am instead limited to one type. with all the expected developments by coker cycles and the recent quax development, how can i be sure that the rim will continue to fit new types of tires, if it can’t even fit the current ones?
Bottom line, I’m taking a chance, in good faith, that I will not have a blowout or any other related problem with the rim, tire or tube. And currently, there are only TWO tires out there, and the coker tire, which wears out MUCH faster than the TA, and which I vastly prefer over the coker tire since 100% of my coker-ing will be on smooth bike paths, where you ideally want a road tire anyway.
There have been sooooo many people who have bought the “x” rim and relatively few who have had “blowouts”. I suspect that they maybe didn’t seat the tire bead properly, and/or were running 50 psi or more, which could definitely cause significant stress on the bead, causing it to “pop” out of the rim. Speculation yes, but that’s really all we have at this point as there are no hard facts yet one way or the other.
As I stated, if I experience a failure, I’m covered; John D. gave me his word on that, and based on past experience with UDC, that’s good enough for me. I will certainly post any problems on this website for all to see, so be watching for my report(s) as the week s go by.
I run my TA at 50 PSI and would be bummed if I couldn’t. The high pressure gives way less rolling resistence. Of course I weigh 200 lbs which makes 50psi good for me. If a tire bead fits properly pressure shouldn’t blow the beads off the rim.
I mentioned the possibility of thin areas of the tube herniating and possibly causing problems. I also mentioned the possibility of the stem area being a problem.
I was very doubtful that a tube with thin sections could herniate and blow off a tire. But I added that possibility anyways. In the ideal world of physics analysis the pressure inside a tire is equal in all places and areas inside the tire and never localized. The pressure at the contact patch is not greater than the pressure anywhere else in the tire. But that’s ideal theory. I was brainstorming that maybe there is some sort of tube defect that could localize a pressure force and blow off the tire. Going just on physics theory that is not likely. But the real world does not always obey ideal theory.
A problem with the stem area is more likely. But I’m still not sure how that would blow off a tire. I can speculate, but it doesn’t completely make sense to me.
Do you run that TA on the “X” rim at that psi?
How about this scenario. Maybe when/if the tube blows during riding, the sudden loss of air pressure, in addition to the wheel rotating with your weight on it, can cause the tire to slip off the rim. Maybe these two events happen so quickly in sequence that it seems like the tire is blowing off first. Just a thought.
Some people had the tire blow off while the unicycle was just sitting on its own and not while being ridden.
It’s an interesting thought experiment to think about how a tube defect could contribute to blowing a tire off the rim.
I’m a little skeptical about that first sentence, but I’ll bet it had something to do with the bead not being set, and over inflation. And you said “some people” as in more than one, so can you recall just how many made that claim?
No, thankfully mine is one of the old reliable Airfoils.
Because John D runs 40 psi in his “X” and hasn’t had any problems since running it with the coker tube. I weigh only 145 so that psi should be more than enough for me for the least “rolling resitence”; I may not even need that much!
Danny Allen from post 8 in this thread. I recall others having the same experience of having the tire blow off an Airfoil X rim while they were not even near the unicycle. How many, or what percentage, of the Airfoil blowouts are like that? I don’t know.
That will be great, and I know the idea has been long sought-after. Please remember to include weights! Also as they become available, please include weights for all the individual components you offer as well. That would save a lot of questions here…
Pink is the new black. Just ask Jess Riegel. I’m the one who gave him that sticker, though I can’t remember where I found it…
YEs, and that seems to have defintely been a tube issue, as he states in that very same post:
<<I just thought I would post my experience with the X-Airfoil here as it seems to support this (bad tube) conclusion.
When I first ordered my Nimbus 36" in February, it arrived and I took it out of the box and assembled it. I did not have time to cut down the seat post and give it a test run before I had to go to work. I never checked or changed the air pressure in the tire, it was at whatever pressure it had been shipped with from UDC. When I got back from work (only 2 hours later) to my surprise the tire had blown off the rim and there was a hole about 2 inches long in the tube in this location. I contacted UDC about the problem, and was promptly sent a new tube. I was told that there had been a problem with a defective batch of tubes.
After installing and inflating the new tube, being especially careful to seat the bead correctly, I was still a little suspicious of the tire/rim situation. However, I have had no problems with it since then, and my suspicion has slowly died with time. I generally ride with 40-45psi and have been on several 20-30 mile rides on it. I have not done any muni on it, although I have gone down curbs and such a couple times with no problems.
I will post here if I experience any X-Airfoil related problems.
–Danny>>
I’d be curious to know how many total airfoil x rims are out there. There seems to be a good # of blowouts reported on this forum. Seems like it could be a relatively high %. The # of sold X’s can’t be that high.
edit - this dead horse is taking a flogging.