You’ve got to grab the middle lever with your teeth while gently sliding the outer levers inwards with your hands?
Throw those instructions in the bin.
My n=1. About 15-20min per wheel to tape up, fit and seal with a floor pump. I was able to roll the beads on with my hands much the same as any other tight fitting tyre I’ve wrestled on.
That said, I have much stronger hands than most people. If I didn’t have a beat up set of meat hooks at my disposal there’s no way I’d be able fit/remove one roadside.
That said, I agree with @TheOtherOne, I started next to one of the levers, rather than in the middle.
Once installed on the rim, the beads do stretch. I recently swapped out my first worn out tubeless tire, and was able to remove it with just my thumbs.
I’ve mounted a good fwe GP5000TLs and never had much of an issue - mostly mounting them by hand - so thought there were a few people being rather dramatic in this thread…until the last attempt!
I had taken a pair of worn (meaning, looser than new!) GP5000s off a guy’s bike and thought I’d try them on my wheels to see if 28s would go in the frame. As I’m running tubes I just popped off the current tyre and planned to fit the GP5000, inflate it with a tube. If it fitted I’d consider setting it up tubeless.
Fitting it ended up with a similar situation to the pic above with the 3 levers, except the tyre was significantly lower. One thing not mentioned when suggesting putting the third lever closer to the edge is that it’s impossible to get a lever in anywhere other than the area with the most space (the middle) if the bead is super tight. At this stage I should have probably abandoned the experiment, but carried on - not sure why, as once the tyre was on (only broke one lever getting the bead over the rim!) I had already decided I wasn’t even going to try inflating it.
Now the real fun began, getting it off! After about half an hour I was on the verge of trying to cut it off, but a friend turned up and gave it a go, eventually managing to get it off! The tube was destroyed in the process, but I’ll take that.
For reference, the rim on the wheel is an Ambrosio P20 which I’ve found to be a great rim - easy to build, strong and reliable - but which was discontinued ‘for some reason’. I think I’ve found the reason!
I just received a set of 32x622 and they are small enough to be impossible to thumb on 23mm internal stock alloy wheels. Just a quick check fresh out of box and without any soapy water. Going to set out in the hot sun a couple days. Goal is to mount them on 25mm internal width Bontrager Aeolus Pro 3V carbon wheels.
I’ve since had another go at 28’s (new) on Fulcrum rims and I was determined to use only what I’d have road side. Turns out with grippy cycling gloves I had enough purchase to palm roll them on and was done and dusted in about 10 minutes per wheel. The amount of effort required was considerable though; all those years of choking the chicken set me up for this moment!
I had already bought my gp5000’s stated to fit them to my mavric allroad rims (been doing much more road than gravel hence the purchase).
Found it impossible even after baking them in the oven etc.
I took them to a local bike shop who fitted them quite quickly however did state they are never coming off at the roadside!
I no longer carry a tube just plugs patches etc. If I really needed to bodge something by the roadside!
Tyres seem awesome so far in terms of grip and performance!
I honestly don’t understand why anyone would purchase the tubeless version of this tire. I’m not referencing the previous post, but all the posts and what we have learned. From all the issues I hear about, they don’t seem to work with a large range of wheelsets. And there’s a couple other tires out there that are similar in performance and don’t have these issues. Absolutely not worth the headache imho.
I would certainly buy them again. They are on my Hunt wheels and Prime wheels and were on my disc. A little trickier to get over the rim IME than Schwalbe/ Vittoria but even when my fingers were weak and the nerves destroyed though chemo I could fit them. As a result of them being tight, I think, they are so much easier to seat and lose less air than schwalbe/vitorria and less of a b@ll ache overall IMHO . I only changed my disc to schwalbe because the lbs didn’t have 5000TLs
I’m absolutely a cheerleader for tubeless . I won’t go back to using tubes. My comment was specific to the gp5k. There’s more great comparable tubeless options out there. I’d understand putting up with the headache if the gp5k were lightyears ahead of everything else, but they’re not.
I fitted 2 GP5000’s November last year, with few problems . Just replaced the rear after 7000km, and it was even easier (not sure if Conti have slightly changed the design, or just that I now have more experience with TL).
It’s pretty clear that they work well with some wheels, and not with others.
If you get scared off from using the best all-round tire out there because of some negative experiences, so be it.
You must have one of the few wheelsets that it fits on. Just read the responses in this thread. So many have issues with it. We have an entire thread dedicated to it specifically. And it doesn’t even require me being scared because there are so many good options. It’s not the best all around tire. It absolutely is one of the top in terms of performance.
I’ve managed to get them on Mavic and ENVE wheels. Mavics were a little niggly but I thought them well worth the effort. Having said that, swapped over to Goodyear’s and they popped on and up pretty easy in comparison. Wouldn’t warn anyone off GP5000TL’s on my experience though
I tried fitting GP 5000 TL on Bontrager Aeolus Comp for my SC, but they are not mountable at all.
I was able to mount a 5000 TL fairly easily on a Flow Disc wheel.
I also just got a new pair of Hunt 35 carbon wheels and mounted GP 5000 TLs on them. They were pretty hard to mount just by hand and tire leavers. However, once I put on a pair of work gloves for grip they went on without too much trouble. I also took them off once just to make sure I could do it on the road if I needed to and had no issues (was easier to mount the second time). I am a pretty inexperienced with tubeless in general, but I didn’t have any issues with sealant/popping them into place once they were on the rim.
The tires are really awesome out on the road and I highly recommend them.
The tire-lever photo wasn’t depicting everything happening at once.
Inserting the lever in the center is so that it slides in easy and you don’t damage lever, rim, bead, or disrupt the static levers if you otherwise tried to jam it in under the tight edge of bead.
After inserting, slide (lubing lever & bead helps) lever over near one of the static levers and then work that edge of the bead onto rim as you stated, alternating sides keeping inflation valve in center of job.
I like this way of doing it….got some schwalbe levers and did as OP (for the photo) suggested….worked great!
The 5000 TL in 32c have been sitting out in the sun about 3-4 days a week for the last month. Yesterday was another hot day, and I mounted them on the Aeolus Pro 3V rims. These rims are 32mm external and 25mm internal.
Used all the tricks and still needed the Kool-Stop tire jack to finish the install. Tossed in the Vittoria Air-Liner for road in large (30-32mm tires).
33.4mm inflated to 80psi, a smidge wider than the rim. Will check in a couple months to see how much they widen.
Tried installing them earlier, before putting them in the sun for a month. That was on Fulcrum 700 alloy wheels and it would have required using the Kool-Stop tire jack.
These 5000 TL are the most difficult to install tire that I’ve encountered, 2 sizes on 3 different rims:
Enve 5.6 Disc with 25c 5000 TL
Aeolus Pro 3V with 32c 5000 TL
Fulcrum 700 with 32c 5000 TL
After the 5000 TL I’m going to try 30c Pirelli P Zero Velo TLR.
. I won’t go back to using tubes. My comment was specific to the gp5k. There’s more great comparable tubeless options out there. I’d understand putting up with the headache if the gp5k were lightyears ahead of everything else, but they’re not.