15" wheels and Avon ZZS tyres rubbing on cycle wings

[Grebby]

As mentioned in my "Hello" post in ChitChat I've recently dug my 7 back out of the corner of a barn and  I am getting it back on the road. This meant replacing the 10+ year old CR500 tyres and after checking with Caterham I went with ZZSs.

The problem I now have is that the tyres rub on the outer edge of my cyclewings.

My wheels are 15" K&N 10 spokes. There is only approx 5mm or so between the wing stays and the tyre on the inside edge though.

Anyone else had this problem? How did you solve it?

I really could do with sorting this ASAP as I wanna go play and I promised I'd drive my daughter to school (primary) many moons ago and she's currently in her last year 

Cheers

Grebby

[John Vine]

I think the only solution is to bend the stay carefully.  You might be able to do this with the wing attached, but it would be safer to remove the wing, bend the stay and then refit.

Fortunately, my 195/50-R15 ZZSs just fit, with a few mm of clearance.

JV

[Grebby]

By "remove the wing" do you mean the actual fibreglass part from the stay?

Mine are bonded on so that would be difficult

[John Vine]

I do, but you could try bending first. The risk is that the gel coat might crack.

JV

[Dave Hardcastle]

#3 The bonding is only a rubbery mastic, Tiger Seal, available from Halfords WITH a club discount, that's fairly easily cut away.

[Grebby]

I remembered either Sikaflex or Tigerseal from the dim distant past.

I've just ordered a couple of tubes of Tigerseal and will have a go at cutting the wing off the stays.

[SM25T]

Definitely remove wing first. I damaged my fibreglass cycle wings trying it with wing in situ. Don't forget the tyres flex a lot when cornering, so allow more than 'just clearing' when spinning it by hand.

[Grebby]

I managed to get the wings off and the adhesive cleaned off this morning after dropping the kids off at school.

I had a good look at where they were bonded on first though and I recon I can shift them outwards by a good few mm if I flex the wing lip a bit by the stay uprights.

I hope to get a bit of time over the weekend to get the wheels back on and try the wings in place.

I waiting on Tigerseal to be delivered and then I'll give everything a good clean up and stick the buggers back on again.

I'm certainly feeling a lot happier that the tyres will fit afterwards

[Grebby]

Had another bit of time today so popped the wheels back on an tried the wings in place.

The right hand side clears nicely but the left hand side still contacts the tyre

I had a quick check and the LHS wing stays are further away from the wheel than the RHS which is causing the problem.

So back to needing to bend the wing stays a bit.

Any advise on the best way to do this?

The wing can't be moved completely out of the way because of the indicator wiring. Do I need to pull the wiring and feed it back through afterwards?

 

[Grebby]

All sorted and bonded back on now.

I did bend the stays a bit but also spaced the wing up off the stay a bit. This allowed the wing flange on the inside edge to contact further up on the angle at the corner of the stay which also moved the wing outwards.

[ScottR400D]

Good job! I must admit that when I built my car tyre clearance didn't occur to me. Then when I changed from CR500s to ZZRs I noticed they were a tighter fit but again didn't think much of it, as they still cleared the wings. 

Since then I've been quite surprised at the number of people who've had issues with no clearance and thankful that I seem to be in a minority with these tyres. 
 

 

[John Vine]

Good result.

JV