aikigreg

I just had an old frame repainted because it's custom to me and I love it. Got a nice new FLO wheelset which I also love. Wheel is 28mm outside width. Got 28mm tires and they rub the seat stays. Put on a set of older schwalbe pro one tires in 25mm and they spin on the stand with room to spare but when ipedal everything flexes just enough that they still rub. There's got to be a way to rig it. I don't think they make a good 23mm tubeless do they? I could perhaps:

Grind down a bit of the crown of the seat stays. or I could shim the wheels so they sit a mm or 2 lower in the dropouts.

What ideas do y'all have?

LesterOfPuppets

Personally I'd just run tubes on that bike. I run tubeless on my Lemond because it fits 30mm tires no problem, but my Basso is likely to always have tires with tubes because of tire clearance in the fork.

Iride01 

Get a frame that is made for wider tires.

If you insist on making this frame work with wider tires, and it's a steel frame, then you might collapse the radius of the tubing on the side that rubs back into the tube itself. But this will depend on how good you are at doing such and might just as well have you getting that other frame anyhow.

You might have seen some chain stays on the drive side of steel bikes collapsed in a similar fashion to give clearance for the rings.

cpach

23mm tubeless tires aren't crazily difficult to find if you look. QBP (the most popular bike distributor in the US) shows stock for Vittoria Corsa Speed in 23mm, which admittedly is a race-day oriented tire. Lots of NOS for older Hutchinson tires etc.

Also maybe save the FLOs for another bike. Pick something with a more modest 17-19mm interior rim width, a less crazy stiff rim, and more spokes and you can probably run a common 25mm tubeless tire without modifying your frame.

Also, if you are rubbing on only one stay, you could dish slightly away from that side.

SoSmellyAir

Older frames have less tire clearance. Which do you love more: the frame or the wheelset?

When you say there is "room to spare" after mounting 25 mm tires, what is the minimum distance between tire and seat stay? Those wheels have an internal width of 21 mm, which makes mounted tires wider than their nominal width. I agree with cpach ; you probably need to consider 25 mm tires on wheels with an internal width of 17 mm.

No idea about narrow tubeless road tires. But rigging it does not sound safe.

LesterOfPuppets

I have a pair of Vittoria tubeless wheels that I've run with tubes most of their lives. I just recently set them up tubeless when I got a NOS set of Mavic tubeless wheels, which have been run with tubes since I got them almost a year ago.

Since I have a handful of old steel bikes it doesn't really make much sense to run them all tubeless anyways, just the ones I put the most miles on.

tFUnK

If the frame is steel you can dimple the stay to create more clearance.

Otherwise I'd go with a narrower rim and run 25s or 28s. I run rims with ID of 16-18mm (OD 23-25mm) and I run 25mm tires. The old GP4Ks run fat so they're like 27mm on a modern wide rim - about the widest I can fit on some frames but rubs on a couple others.

I've tried the shim thing where I used a 20mmx10mmx2mm washer on my QR axle (between the hub and the frame) and it did create some clearance but like you said, wheels flex...

See black spacers on the inner dropouts below




Here the Ti frame tolerates it and I've also done with with carbon frames (to protect the dropout inner surface, not to increase clearance).