For those of you that ride tubulars, how picky are you during the fitment of the tire onto the wheel once all of your glue layers have been appropriately applied? What I am interested in is how much time you spend ensuring the tire is as straight as possible and with as little hop as possible, and what you think is an acceptable amount of "wobble" or hop.

The reason I ask is I'm trying to decide if I should go through the long and arduous process of remounting a tire on my rear wheel to eliminate a 1-2mm hop caused probably by my lack of fully stretching the tire during installation, resulting in a flatter (ie. lower) spot which looks like a hop. I have no worries about the tire coming off, but wonder if the hop is slowing me down at all or resulting in added vibration at speed. I've had it like this for a couple of months with no real problem, but it is "hoppier" than my clincher wheels would ever be.

Your thoughts are appreciated!

When I get a new set of tires, I mount them on a couple of spare rims, pump them up and let them stretch for couple of weeks.

When glueing and mounting do spend some time, say no more than 5 min per tire to make sure they are on good, straight and round.

I hate looking down and seeing a tire that looks like it's wobbling and I absolutely can;t stand any hop!. I would immediately re-glue that rear tire of yours.

I've been using Tufo extreme tape on my LW's with veloflex tires. With the (tire side) backing tape still on, and the tire mounted, it's easy to center the wheel prior to pulling the strip off to finsh the taping process. Easy and simple.

:rolleyes: To the point of your original question, if you've been riding it that way for two months and unable to "feel" any hop when riding, I'd probably just leave it be. You run the risk of weaking the bond of the base tape to the casing when removing the tire, which will result in more serious issues.:mad2:

If I can feel the hop, I would remount it. What tire do you have on?

If you add a last layer of glue to the rim and wait 10-15 minutes before stretching the tire onto the rim, it is easy to move the tire with 20 psi pressure to center and straighten it.

Very picky.
Since I only use Tubies on my crit and road race wheels, I make sure that they are on straight. When I mount them for stretching I make sure that they are round, and that they can be glued on straight.
After I glue them on, I put the wheel on a bike and double check. Any adjustments are made while the glue is still wet.

:rolleyes: ...You run the risk of weaking the bond of the base tape to the casing when removing the tire, which will result in more serious issues.:mad2:

That's an interesting angle I hadn't considered- I suppose I always assumed the base tape is on there with some massively strong industrial adhesive, but it does make sense that the force required to remove a glued on tire is still substantial. I have to remount my front tire to a new rim (crash replacement due to a small crack) so I'll carefully inspect that tire's base tape before remounting for any signs of delamination.

If I can feel the hop, I would remount it. What tire do you have on?

I have some Veloflex Carbons (700 x 22mm) on there. I was impressed by the whole "Handmade in Italy" thing and had some friends that spoke highly of them. I assumed that the handmade aspect increased the likelihood the tires would be nicely round- anyone have a different experience?