Psimet2001 

Unfortunately with bicycle wheels the heaviest part of the rim/tire assembly is the weld....not the valve. The weld is opposite the valve hole. You would....in theory....need to place the heaviest part of the tire over the valve in order to help balance out the "heavier" weld seam side of the rim.

BTW - balancing discussion really don't have much of a place with reference to bicycles.....coming from a man who manufactures finely balanced inertial engine components daily....

Psimet2001 

Interesting point. You seem more of an Engineer's engineer instead of the people's engineer.

Let me illustrate why I believe the two are the same.

I am the customer. My sepcification includes the details. If you miss the details then the quality of your work is poor/below my specification.

An acedemic exercise at best, but I think you probably understand what I am saying.

Put another way it would be like saying I went to a fine dining establishment and the food was amazing, but the dishes were dirty and the flatware was incorrectly set. I have to then wonder about the true quality of the food...regardless of its taste. For all I know that was actually the best tasting dog steak I ever had.

Same with mechanics.

Pedaleur

Yeah, I get it. But I'll give a counter example: I built some wheel myself. I didn't get the label lined up correctly because I mis-calculated the offset and I wasn't going to go and re-lace the damn thing. Now, I know that there is no effect on the quality of the build (which may or may not be good), but if I tried to sell the wheel as "hand-built", then the label screams of inexperience, which is (usually) correlated to quality.

PS. The best restaurants are the ones with the most health code citations. (A joke, of course, but the best bakery in town nearly got closed down a couple months ago. Coincidence?)

PPS. I sent you an PM about your hand-built wheels.

Pedaleur

But what does it have to do with the alignment of the label on the hub? The _only_ thing that matters is the installation of the tube. Everything else is irrelevant to locating the stone/glass/whatever. And the tube orientation merely cuts the places to look in half. Hardly a huge time saver when changing a flat (but I'll admit it is a nice party trick).

I "get" the pride in workmanship. I understand OCP. I see what is going on with all the alignment gimmicks. But Psimet is right -- I'm an engineer who can do Laplace transforms and loves his HP calculator -- I see no _objective_ reason for it all.

Perhaps I'm just overcompensating for my wheel-building shame...

Spreggy

Yes, AND it provides a reason for keeping the stem nuts on. When you flat, take the wheel off and go once around it with eye balls and hand to find the offender. If not found, pop off one of the wheel beads, and slip the tube out without taking the stem out (leave nut on to hold it in place). Pump a few pounds into it and find the leak in the tube, and once located, find the source in the tire right next to where the leak is. Fast, easy.

noisebeam

Thanks that makes sense. Basically keep the tube attached to the rim until the culprit has been found. I'll try that next time.
Al

green814

I hadn't read the "Tip Of The Day" before I mounted my tires, but what does it mean if the tire label was centered on the Bontrager sticker on the wheels? https://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...s/IMG_0040.jpg

I did make sure I put the tube in correct though according to the directional arrow. Don't want the tube to blow out due to being mounted backwards!

Chris

urbanknight

Correct, which is why I always put my wheel magnet on one of the valve's neighboring spokes

Banzai

Newbie (who I drag out in the mornings to ride in to work with me) got a new set of tires while I was on vacation. I was gleefully looking forward to scoffing his fred-ness when the labels were not lined up with the valve.

He didn't disappoint.

His next two questions were: Why should I do that? And; What's a fred?

Sheesh. Fred.

It took a while to explain, but he'll be fixing that tonight, so he claims.

cocoasprinkles

why does you belt buckle line up with the zipper seam? Cause it look good.

teiaperigosa

Flatballer

Yeah. Totally worth digging up a thread for.

StephenH

Back when I fixed truck flats, a standard piece of equipment was a piece of tire chalk, used to mark the valve stem location on the tire so you could find the offending object in the tire.

KiddSisko

I made that mistake once. Once was enough.

KiddSisko

I made a face when I read that. You'd have approved.

Bob Dopolina 

+1000

And this is the correct answer on all counts.

/thread

Bob Ross

Don't feel so bad; I've been cycling since 1967 and only learned about the valve stem/tire label alignment theory in 2006.

Then again, if there'd been one of these here interweb things in 1967, I suppose I'd have learnt sooner...

Bob Ross

I wonder if you (or anyone else) would extend this concept to include the Rotation Direction indicators that some manufacturers put on their tires? Especially considering that those same manufacturers (eg, Conti) admit that there is no performance benefit, or demonstrable difference, to orienting the tire one way or the other.

BananaTugger

Pretty much.

Psimet2001 

Interesting. Normally yes.

I recently ran into this with some Michelin Mud2 tires for cross. They have directional arrows that require one to mount the tire on the rear in such a way that the label no longer lines up on the drive side. *shiver*....

Psimet2001 

Nice. I have a few shots like that on my computer at home.

steve_wmn

I have a few shots like ******.cx on my computer at home. Same thing really.

I've been riding road bikes since 1976 or so and first heard about the label/valve stem thing in 2005 or so. I immediately shrugged it off as OCP bull**** and haven't read anything that'd change my mind. When I get a flat I inspect the outside of the tire, pull out the old tube, run my thumb around the inside of the tire if I didn't find anything on the outside, put the new tube in and go on my way. Localizing the puncture seems like a waste of time since I'll inevitably check the entire inside wall if the puncture had no obvious source from the outside.

I swear, some of you folks paint your garage doors white just to have the proper backdrop for a BF.net picture.

Bob Ross

Wait, so you're saying it's a waste of time, because you're still going to waste your time doing the very thing that this waste of time is designed to eliminate?

Psimet2001 

Why do you hate doing a good job?

green814

You would have loved the look on my cousin's face when he told me he couldn't find the arrows on his mtb tube when he was trying to figure out why he kept getting a flat. I just started laughing!!!!! His look was priceless! I had mentioned that maybe the tubes were in wrong, check the direction arrows,and that was maybe why he kept getting flats .

Chris