JoeTBM 

For the life of me I cannot find 20" x 20mm rim liners from my usual sources. Anyone got a line on where to find some for my charity shop?

Or maybe can spare a few, thanks.

cpach

Do you have a QBP account? They have Kenda 20" rimstrips for a reasonable price.

Andrew R Stewart 

Given the current shortage of many basic bike parts, due to the world wide disruption of manufacturing and the massive increase of demand from the Covid-19 pandemic, it's no surprise that rim strips are unavailable. We haven't been able to restock 26" rubber strips (or tubes!) for weeks. Andy

dsbrantjr

You could use a couple of layers of Kapton tape, or some filament-reinforced packing tape instead.

Crankycrank

Velox or other brand of cotton tape and cut it to proper length..

curbtender

Silicon tape works well. Seals to itself, stretches to fit, doesn't stick to rim.

WizardOfBoz

ds, I recently bought some pretty thick Kapton(R) tape*. I think it's 0.5mm thick. IIRC, it's 1 inch diameter. Is this thickness useful for rim strips, or is it too thick (or thin)? What is the best thickness for this application?

* FWIW, my Kapton(R) use had nothing to do with bikes. My late Mom's PC had a rather wimpy CPU. The model of PC (an HP) had two options, one with discrete (added, more powerful) graphics, and one without (used the built-in graphics in the CPU). Mom had the less powerful one, without discrete graphics. HP handled power management with a heat conducting tube and fan. The tube and fan had one pad for the integrated graphics, but the tube was much thicker and had two pads for the discrete graphics. So I found a more powerful CPU (35W vs 25W), bought a discrete graphics thermal management unit with the thicker heat conductor, and used the Kapton to ensure that the graphics pad was isolated from the motherboard.

dsbrantjr

It should work OK, you probably need just one layer with a generous overlap at the end. Cut a clean hole for the valve with a sharp blade so you don't start a run.

JoeTBM 

No we do not and looking at their criteria for dealers we would not meet the requirements.

JoeTBM 

Thanks Andy, yes we have seen delays on many previous orders, some are out there for 90-120 days right now.

Fortunately I have ample stock for now of 26" items but we just used the last 20" liners for a couple of bikes we were getting ready for a family in need.

cpach

Who do you normally order from? https://www.bikecollectives.org/wiki...e=Distributors is a useful list of distributors and requirements for accounts, with a focus on community cooperatives. If I were doing the kind of work you are, I'd probably want most to have a JBI account as they have better supplies of inexpensive components.

Also, really nothing wrong with gorilla tape cut to width for cheap rim tape, although it's a little more time consuming than a rubber strip.

JoeTBM 

Since we are not a brick & mortar shop, distributors will not take us on as a "dealer" but we do work through a LBS that is supportive of our work and does deal with JBI.
They are not marking up anything to us and actually feeds us used bikes for our work. We are very grateful to them and and promote the LBS to potential customers.

It remains that JBI has none in any of their warehouses

JoeTBM 

I think we just found a bag of 25 via an obscure search on ebay from Planet Cyclery in Colorado, reasonable price too. We'll see if they ship

tomtomtom123

You could also use strapping tape. Then you can use it on any diameter of rim. Just wrap 2 rounds and then cut the tape. I bought tesa 4289 for $10 for 66 meters. 2 rounds on 406 rims is around 2.5 meters. So I can apply it to 26 rims. That's around 40 cents per rim. The tesa tape is supposedly the same product that some tubeless tape are, but rebranded for 10 times the price.

mrrabbit 

It's not world wide, it's China . . . because all your distributors got greedy and moved all their sourcing to China, abandoning Taiwan a decade ago.

Those same distributors are now trying to roll back to Taiwan, only to be reminded Taiwan quality costs more.

Yes folks, all your prices even on basic and replacement stuff is going to go up about 10%.

(Distributors that kept their supply chains open with Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia are doing just fine.)

=8-|

Andrew R Stewart 

While I don't disagree with the root of your point I will point out that the supply chain production is scaled to past years of need. With the massive increase of demand and the lack of "extra" income the increased cost for available product is both hard to pay for or to get at all. At the shop I work for we have changed our estimating cost quotes for a couple of months. If we don't have the parts on hand the estimate is less verified. We tru to stock Shimano stuff but that is hard to maintain. Demand can out pace any production source. Andy

JoeTBM 

I really do not like to use tape, especially on a regular basis. I find it harder to remove and cleanup. Rubber rim liners are easy to remove (to change a spoke) and reinstall.
Yes tape is good for emergencies

tomtomtom123

The product description of the tesa 4289 says that it leaves no residue, but I haven't attempted to take it off so I don't know. Although I have used it to strap some steel rods together and there was little or no residue. Probably very easy to clean off with alcohol. If you use 2 rounds on the rim, if you temporarily remove the tape then you could put it back on in the reverse direction so that the top layer is now on the bottom and the bottom is now on the top since the top layer would still have it's original adhesion.
The reason why I switched to this tape was because it's much thinner and doesn't get in the way of mounting and dismounting the tire. The slippy slidey rim bands were very thick and were getting in between the tire and rim, causing bulges when inflating.

Trakhak

If you have ample stock of 26" rim strips, you can cut them down as needed and overlap and rubber cement the ends to make 20" rim strips.