Taking off a tyre

1) Preparation:
- Remove your bike wheel by loosening the bolts either side of the axle.
- Take off the valve top (the valve is the place where you pump up your tyre)
- Deflate the tyre by pushing on the small button in the middle of the valve. You don't need to wait for your tyre to be completely deflated, suffice for it to be very soft. B’Twin tip: you can deflate your tyre easily using one end of the tyre lever!

2) Take off the tyre

- Now the serious work begins! In order to take off your tyre, you first need to push on the sides of the tyre, towards the inside. The tyre should normally detach itself simply from the walls of the wheel rim, and should be able to move inside the rim.

- This is where the tyre levers come in. Use them as levers to take the inside of the tyre and bring it outside the rim. Careful not to pierce the inner tube! You can usually hook your tyre lever onto a spoke to keep the tyre outside the rim. Repeat the operation until one whole side of the tyre comes out of the rim.

- Once the first half of the tyre has come out of the rim tracks, you can remove the inner tube. Once you have removed the inner tube, you can finish taking off the whole tyre, which is very easy by pulling with your hands.

- If you want to also take off the "rim strip", you can use a screwdriver to enable you to remove this through the valve hole. The rim strip is usually elastic and comes off easily.

Putting a tyre back on

1) Preparation

- If you have a rim strip (a kind of elastic covering the inside of the rim) you can go directly to the next point. If not, stay here! If there is no rim strip, you will have to fit one. This limits punctures. The inner tube runs the risk of a puncture if it is inflated directly on the rim. A little tip for easy fitting: Place the rim strip base hole onto the rim valve hole, and put your screwdriver inside.  You can then easily put on the rest of the rim strip (which is generally slightly elasticated), without it moving.

- tyre direction. Yes, most tyres have a direction. This is generally marked directly on the tyre by small arrow or the note front/rear, on the front and back respectively.

2) Fitting the tyre

- You will first need to put one side of the tyre into the rim, which can be done by hand. Once the right-hand or left-hand side is put into the rim, you can move on to the following stage.

- Then put in the inner tube, slightly inflated. Pass the valve through the rim hole before placing it entirely into the tyre.

- All that remains is to put the second side of the tyre into the rim! You can start to do this by hand and, if this is too hard, use the tyre levers to fit the rest of the tyre. (Careful not to pierce the inner tube!)

- Finally, you will need to check that the tyre has been fitted correctly into the rim and blow it up again. Once you have screwed the little valve top back on, you have finished!