Any clincher-friendly rims available?
 

Recently had a wheel-set built up with Mavic Open Pro UTS rim. Even though I haven't use them yet -- they're for a frame I'm waiting to get repaired -- I'm already seriously considering finding other rims, and rebuilding them again, because clincher tires are so hard, if even possible, to get on and off the freaking things! (Broke FOUR tire levers in a matter of minutes.) I have Mavic Open Pro rims from years ago, and it is absolutely shocking how easy it is to get tires on and off of those with just a couple fingers! Are the new (non-UST) Mavics still easy to get on and off, or have they also been "updated?" (One thing is, I use 32-35c tires; I believe they only recommend up to 28c.) Are there any other rims out there that are fairly easy to get clinchers on? (I have no interest in tubeless.)

It is the tires, I believe. Get the Pedro's tire levers and Kool Stop tire bead jack and your problems with tires should be over.

Rims designed for tubeless tires have a center channel. In order to mount tires easily you have to make sure that the tire bead is in the channel as you pull the tire over the rest of the rim. Using the correct technique, I have successfully mounted road tubeless tires on tubeless compatible rims without any tools at all

Put your tires on the old (non-UST) rims you have and inflate to max PSI. Let sit for 2 days, remove, and then you should hopefully find a lot easier to get on the UST rims.

How can it possibly be the tires, if, as I said, the tires that were nearly impossible to mount on the UTS rims went on the non-UTS ones within seconds with just my fingers?! It's obviously the rim.

Interesting. Maybe I will try that. Thing is, that doesn't do me any good when I get a flat 30 miles from home . . .

I missed the UST part, different animal, but still stand by the tools I mentioned for todays clincher tires.

When I'm pulling the tire on, it just keeps sliding around, usually getting hung up along the rim wall. Any tricks to get it to stay in the center?

Once it is stretched it should stay stretched. Having said that, if you need a bead jack or other tool at home you will need to take it with you on rides or you will be stuck if you get a flat.
Another alternative would be to use a thinner rim tape; if you are using the common Velox cloth tape you might consider switching to Kapton, filament tape or Continental Easy Tape, which are thinner and leave more room in the rim for the bead to drop down.

Occasionally tubeless ready rims really genuinely don't play nice with some tires, but it is often that improved tire mounting technique can make everything doable with your hands and a normal tire lever.

Start opposite the valve, get one side of the tire on the rim--this is made easiest if you try to get it into the center channel. To get the other side on, pinch the tire into the center channel while pushing the whole tire towards the valve. Once you get to the last bit, go ahead and start opposite the valve again, pressing the tire into the center and towards the valve, before trying to pull the tire over the rim. This will work with 95% of tubeless rims with clincher tires, but there are absolutely some combos that work terribly. I wouldn't personally choose any setup that required tools to mount, though as a professional mechanic I'm better at mounting tires than the vast majority of riders.

Also make sure that even if you aren't using tubeless tires, that your rims are set up with tubeless tape as it is absolutely necessary to mount tires smoothly. Definitely, for the love of all that is good, do not use velox or similar in a tubeless rim (as much as I love velox).

If you genuinely want some non-tubeless rims, there's still some options, particularly given you're running relatively large tires for a road bike. Mavic makes the Open Pro C which is a standard clincher, although truthfully running wider tires like you are you'll have a better ride quality using something wider. Maybe Velocity Dyad?