Cycle Tourist

This is my second bike recently that came with hookless rims. When I bought it I checked the seatpost for movement and the steerer tube. I happily noted the aluminum wheels and hubs. I haven't seen too many hookless rims. My last one on a vintage Puch I pumped to 90 lbs awaked the neighborhood with the resulting explosion as the tire blew off the rim.
My question to my fellow Vintage bike aficionados is can I buy tires for the rim that came with this $30 '71 Schwinn SS. The tires that came with it were barely used but throughly dried out. They were very difficult to remove as they were, understandably, a very tight fit. The rims are Weinmanns and have a lovely wide flange hub.

branko_76 

Good question, I would like to know as well. Keep in mind that some rims that are "hookless" actually have tapered sidewalls to wedge the bead in place when the tire is inflated.

Can you post a photo of the rim to help identify it?

Cycle Tourist

I think some Kenda K35s with a steel bead and a max 90 lbs inflation pressure should work.

BFisher

Continental Ultrasports are a great deal. I run them on my hookless rimmed Super Course. Ride much better than any Kenda I've ever had. I pump them to 70 psi max.

bikemig 

Not a big deal. There are a lot of threads on this. The bottom line is get a 27 inch tire with a steel bead and don't run it much above say 75 PSI. Panaracers tend to be the go to tire since they sort of look like an old school gumwall tire. Plus they're really good tires.

wrk101

Back in the day, I ran Michelin Elan tires, 27-1, on my UO8 at 100 to 110psi. Never had a problem. Put modern tires on the same bike and rims, had a blow out 1/2 block later.

rjhammett

Right or wrong, when I come upon a bike with non-hooked rims they go out to the alley for the scrappers.

bikemig 

Wow, send me those good looking old school high flange hubs. I'll happily pay the shipping,

dddd

I will second BFisher's recommendation of Continental wire-bead tires, because I have found them to be among the tightest-fitting.

Unfortunately, the bigger variable here is with the Weinmann rims, which are some of the worst offenders as far as quality-control of the bead-seating diameter.

So you will have to test your own rims by inflating tires on them and paying attention to any creeping lift-off of the tire beads that is occurring during ever-higher inflation pressure.

Due to the complex internal profile of these rims (the curvature and the protruding spoke nipples), it is not so easy to simply build up the bead-seating diameter with tape.
It can be done, but I wonder if it might be better, on rims that have a problem, to apply a hardening liquid to the edges of the floor of the rim cavity in order to build it up.
Something like an epoxy resin, perhaps with a 1/8" narrow strip of Velox tape bonded in along each inside edge of the rim's floor(?).

Out of four of these 1971 Supersport rims, only one causes a real problem for me at the modest 80psi that I like to run in my ~26mm tires.
But again these rims need to be tested one at a time to see where their bead seating diameter stacks up against varying pressure with any particular tire. Yours may be fine!

dddd

As for other brands of hookless clinchers, many thousands of such rims came on Fujis and the like fitted from the factory with 100psi skin-side tires that easily took that pressure and more!
It was only when rims were carelessly sized for their diameter that a quality wire-bead clincher could blow off. Mostly a quality-control problem from what I have seen.

I have no qualms with these old, cheap, single-walled clincher rims with Schraeder valve holes as long as 1): the rim diameter is consistently correct and 2): the welded rim joint is smooth and consistent enough to prevent thumping under braking.
Unfortunately, neither can quite be taken for granted on certain models of rims, particularly OEM-spec rims where cost cutting was done to meet price constraints and thus attract large orders.

branko_76 

Those Weinmanns are straight walled, not tapered.

Cycle Tourist

Yup. I know. I'm no fan of Kenda tires but they run well at lower pressure. I like Contis but they blew off my first encounter at 90 lbs before I got on the bike so we'll see how the cheapies do. Here's a picture of my new project and yes I know it's a rather ugly bike I'd probably never normally buy but I'm bored.

Slightspeed

About a year ago, I came across a barn find Legnano Gran Premio from about 1961. It came to me with identical appearing Araya 700c clincher rims, but the rear is hookless. I've been running a set of used wire beaded Continental Gatorskin 25s at around 100 psi on both rims for over a year with no problems. As far as I know this is my first bike with a hookless rim, and I don't see or notice any difference, over normal rims.

dddd

As I mentioned earlier, this is a quality-control issue so it's different from one rim to another.

I tried a lot of tires and discovered that these old Weinmanns seemed to have more variation to them than all of the tires I tested did.

I ended up using very wide Velox tape, custom-trimmed so as to reach the edges with the tube pressing on it. That got me the extra 10-15psi I was after. This was trickier than it sounds.

If the spokes are highly tensioned, that will further reduce the bead-seating diameter.

branko_76 

Can you elaborate on that?

Cycle Tourist

Very interesting stuff. Way back in ancient times they made tires for hookless rims. My first real touring bike wore some Specialized 1 3/8 tires that were so hard to get on I had to double check to make sure they weren't 700 tires. I needed 4 tire levers to get em off. I like the suggestion of building up the rim strips. I never thought of that. As for heavily tensioned wheels being a little smaller, that I never even considered.

old's'cool

Hookes law

branko_76 

After a cup of coffee, I think I get it now. The diameter of the rim gets smaller as the tension in the spokes increase, resultng in less grip for the wire bead.

Cougrrcj

Agreed 100%


I ran my '75 Fuji with its original unhooked rims for thousands of miles with mid-70s-era Schwinn Super Record 1-1/8 wire-beaded tires at 105psi before I personally hand-built another set of wheels for it. I can't remember the rim brand that I used in early '76 (sourced from Bike Warehouse - now Nashbar), but they were narrower than the original rims, yet still 27" clinchers that I used with those same SSR tires... That custom wheelset gave me great service for well over 25k miles! In later years, that old Fuji had a cheap wheelset that had a problem holding '90s-era Vittoria 1-1/4" tires at 80-90psi... Not sure if the blame lies with tires or rims... Those wheels were replaced with a set of take-offs from one of my project bikes, but those wheels are hooked-rims, and again I can run 27x1-1/8 wire-bead tires at 100+psi.

Cycle Tourist

I put the cheap Kendra tires on. They were very tight and hard to get on, (A good thing), and held the 90 psi just fine. They did not have "for hooked rims only" marking on them. Just FYI.

branko_76 

I just bought a new pair of Continental UltraSports for my hookless Weinmann alloy rims. These have short sidewalls so I was a little nervous when I got to 100 psi. I'm going to let them sit for a couple of days with that pressure before taking it for a ride.

Cycle Tourist

Wow. 100 psi. The Kendas max out at 90. I put about 75 and they seemed fine. The girl that bought the bike looked to be 90lbs. 🙄 Heck, that's about twice the weight of the bike.😂

branko_76 

The Continentals I have are rated to 116 psi

nesteel 

^^This. Life is too short to deal with crap that was marginal back in it's day, let alone now.

dabac

I’ve fitted tubulars to 630 mm hookless w/o issue. No problem running high pressure then.