So I just bought my first ENVE SES wheelset and overall I’m really happy—but the wheels are sooooo hard to seal with the included stems.
From what I’ve seen online, I’m not the only one running into this. To get mine to seal properly, I basically have to press the rubber base firmly into the rim bed with a tire lever (or some other flat tool) while tightening the valve nut from the other side—handtightening but with quite a bit of force. Almost feels like anyone with less hand strength might struggle to get these sealed at all.
If I don’t really crank it down, the stems don’t seal and I can hear air hissing from the wheel.
Is this a feature or a bug? Any reassuring words or tips?
I can’t rule it out, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. Both wheels are affected, and on one of them even after replacing the rim tape. I’m no pro, but I don’t think I’d be doing something that wrong. It seems more likely to me that the rubber stem base and the channel just don’t get along very well.
My ENVEs sealed up immediately the first time. IIRC, the valves were aleady installed upon receipt. I did have trouble sealing 3 of 4 (non-enve) wheels recently when I replaced the rim tape with Silca’s new tape…leaking through the spoke holes on all of them. Ripped it out and replaced with Stan’s yellow tape, sealed immediately. What I get for trying new tape when I never had an issue with the previous one…
Did the valves come with different rubber feet? Sometimes a different shape will sit better in trough of the wheel better (though, honestly, I can’t think of a single time I didn’t use the default rubber boot during a customer’s tubeless setup).
Another thing you can try is to gently swish and shake the sealant all the way around the wheel to help it find all those nooks and crannies it needs to seal up. If this doesn’t work, then it’s almost certainly an issue with the tape as @Blair_Cabot suggested.
I can confirm they need to be he-man tightened to seal.
After a tire blowout and roadside swap to a tube, going back to tubeless was a struggle until I really cranked on that valve nut (multiple tries every 10 minutes and refills on my ride back tubeless, though they held overnight they didnt on the road…but eventually it held after ~3 rounds).
For the SES 4.5’s. From the factory they were 100% ready to ride.
If the leak is coming from around the valve then you likely need a different shape of rubber foot or a little sealant to perfect that interface. If the leak is coming through the spoke holes then you have a rim strip problem.
I have found Enve rim tape to be a bit of a nightmare; it doesn’t stretch well, isn’t very sticky and is brittle. Since switching to MucOff tape my experience with sealing Enve wheels has become a lot better.
Off-topic, but I’ve gone the opposite direction with tape recently. I haven’t been able to find my long-time favourite Whisky tape for love or money, so bought some Stans. However, it either split during application, split in use (like Michelin tape of yore) or came unstuck. I can only hope I received a bad batch, but I will not be trying another one.
My experience with Silca tape has been short-term, but it stretched nicely, was easy to apply and stuck well.
How much of a leak are we talking about? If you unmount the tire and take a closer look at your rim tape installation, do you see any obvious spots where air could have leaked out from? Enve valve stems are made for its rims - I have a set of Enve 4.5 AR - so it’s hard to imagine their valve stems not fitting their rims. If you believe air is leaking out from rubber base/rim tape interface, may be add a short strip of rim tape a couple of inches in length to cover the valve hole and give it another try.
The volume of escaping air is directly proportional to how tightly it is tightened. But even when tightened fairly strongly, more air escapes than is healthy.
It seems that to get the rubber base, which is quite a bit larger, to fit into the channel, it takes a lot of force. The shapes are not exactly matchy matchy.
One thing did happen, though. What was tightened as much as possible yesterday could still be tightened a bit more today without much trouble. Apparently, after some time, the rubber base did give way slightly and adapted bit more to the shape of the channel.
Does your Enve valve stem look like mine? I unmounted the Schwalbe Pro One TLE 700x28c from my Enve 4.5 AR (now my spare set of rims) after some strenuous effort. Once the Pro One TLE is seated, it is quite challenging to unseat, and I think that’s a good thing.
Yes, the valves are the same. And I can see that on yours too, the rubber base on the long side gets deformed by the pulling force into the channel. Quite possibly everything is fine and I’m just being a wimp who’s afraid to really pull on it? I wouldn’t rule that out.
