Contis vs Mavics
Is it possible to mount a tubeless Continental GP5000 TL tyre on a Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheel?
I’ll start by saying I’m a big fan of bladed spokes. Something about them just works for me aesthetically, and even if their aero benefit is limited or barely required (see: my mountain bike) it’s definitely a nice-to-have. That’s probably a big factor in my wheel choices and why I’ve bought Mavics rather than Hunts or DT Swiss or Fulcrums.
Roll back a few years and my road bikes all had Fuclrum wheels - I had Zeroes (bladed spokes, see) on the De Rosa, Quattros on the Felt, and a set of Racing 7s for winter use. Then I managed to pick up a set of Mavic Cosmics at a huge discount (the outgoing model with the big, brash stickers to match my white bike - perfect, and the last set available at Dutch outfit, Mantel) and later, got another great deal on a set of Crossmax Pros for the aforementioned mountain bike.
They’ve all performed flawlessly so far, so when I was pondering the spec on my Gravel build, and I knew I would want a couple of wheelsets so it could serve double duty for adventure gravel and winter road use (the Fulcrums are QR, not thru-axle so are out of the frame - pun intended), I was soon checking out the Mavic deals once more.
Sure enough, the previous-season bargain Allroads were the last set at Certini Bristol and were heavily reduced. Then for the road wheelset, I spotted quite a few discounted Ksyrium Elites, but nowhere as heavily as Merlin Cycles.
I was thinking about running the wheels tubeless, and Mavic’s UST is about as good as system as there seems to be, but I’ve always felt most confident on Continental’s Black Chilli rubber (and decidedly non-confident on Mavic rubber any time the weather has been wet) so I did a quick Google to check compatibility.
This was when I found not one, but several forum threads littered with people struggling, and for the most part failing, to fit the GP5000 TL onto Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels. The problem seemed to centre around the channel inside the rim. On UST wheels, this channel allows the bead of the tyre to drop in lower, creating slack and making it possible to pull the opposite edge of the tyre over the rim. In the case of the Ksyrium, that channel was quite narrow and the chunky beads of the Continental tyres simply wouldn’t fit. Some of the posts were a couple of years old and checking the spec of the wheels, it seems that the Ksyriums have increased in internal width in recent years - the 2020 model being 19mm vs 17mm a few years previous. So was this still an issue?
I contacted Merlin and got this response:
As far as I know, there have not been any issues with this set up. The GP 5000 are pretty new and as far as we are aware the wheels are the latest version.
Ok. They must sell plenty of these wheels, and at least some of those people must be tubeless fitting GP5000s, so if there was an issue, they’d know. Right? Order placed.
When the tyres arrived, I set about mounting them on the wheels and ran straight into the same problem. With the first side of the tyre successfully on the rim, no amount of pulling or stretching was going to get the other bead in place, with or without tyre levers. After rather longer than I’d like to admit, I started looking at the problem logically, and realised that the channel still wasn’t wide enough for two of those thick beads to fit - they’d have to go in one at a time.
If you’re having the same problem and Google has guided you here, this is what you need:
The method is to get the first side of the tyre over the rim as normal, then as you're putting the second bead in, roll the tread of the tyre towards you (assuming you're looking at the second bead side), lifting the back and pushing the front down with your thumbs so you're effectively lifting the opposite edge of the tyre bead out of the channel and dropping the new one in. Work all the way round the wheel like this and you should generate enough slack to pop the bead over the rim ready to seat it.
If you can do that last step without a lever, you're a better man than me!
Once on, they're a piece of cake to get seated with just a regular track pump and should hold their pressure, even before the sealant has gone in. I’ve done three sets of Contis onto three sets of Mavics now and haven’t had any of the failing-to-seat, sealant-all-over-the-floor woes that seem to be affecting other wheel/tyre combinations.
