We had a visit with Rich Travis recently to talk about his new company Uncle Dick’s Bike Shop and his first product, Uncle Dick’s Bead Slip.
Rich has been about the bike industry for years with stints in key positions at SRAM and Hayes/Manitou among others as well as extensive experience in bike shops and bike shop service areas. Rich has seen A LOT of tire oriented issues resulting from situations where a tire bead won’t seat properly. From Tubeless applications to Vintage bikes with rusted, beadless rims and everything in between. What piqued our interest is that we see bead seat problems all the time in the fat-bike segment of the market that we all love so much.
Common problems seating fat-bike tire beads on rims result from several different factors including varying bead size and quality, varying rim bead seat designs and diameters, the wide range of rim widths we use, the propensity for weight weenies to use tubes that are extremely undersized to save weight as well as the desire to turn our fat-bike tires tubeless among other issues. All these factors can result in wobbly or out of round tires on our fat-bikes.
Rich developed his product from a bike shop mechanics perspective, over the past year, where time is money. A product like Uncle Dick’s Bead Slip save mechanics time by helping the tire bead seat properly the first time. In addition to over a year of testing in the shop environment Rich did extensive testing for compatibility with different tire compounds, rim strips, tubeless sealants.
Is this a product for the average fat-biker? We aim to find out! While visiting, Rich slipped us a few tins “Uncle Dick’s Bead Slip” and we’ve got several tire/rim combos lined up to test. Look for a full report in a few weeks.
If you’d like to learn more about Uncle Dick’s products and special monthly raffles visit http://uncledicksbikeshop.com or check out your local bike shop!
I need to see if that stuff works on the Devist8rs that I have not been able to get to seat properly!
I’ve used this product in the shop for the past year and I honestly can say that it has saved the skin of my thumbs many times when mounting tough tire/rim combinations. It’s been a valuable item in my toolbox.
I just used some of Uncle Dick’s and they really helped seat up a Husker Du.
Good product from Rich!
Cold as freak up here in northern Canada …. how’s this stuff in the cold ? My bike shop is my garage heated with a wood stove. Gets warm but not room temperature