tubeless (newbie)

I'm in the 'waste of time and effort on a road bike' school of thought.  I persevered for a couple of years then threw a pair of 'perfecty good' top-dollar tubeless tyres in the bin, gave all my tubless kit (that tells you everything you need to know) to a friend (not for much longer) and put Michelin Pro4s back on.  Not looked back since.

Two comments here, the first is dont bother with an inflator tank, I have never failed to seat a tubeless tyre with either a track pump or, where that doesnt work, a CO2 canister.  Secondly, dont bother with tubeless, after sticking with them for 3 years and trying to convince myself it was better than tubes I have now gone back to using inner tubes.

If it hasn't been mentioned already.

When blowing the tyres up for the first time (without sealant), I'd recommend wetting the tyres/wheel rims with hot soapy water, using a sponge.

I'd want to be able to do it myself, would hate to have to resort to going to a shop every time I wanted to change tyres or fix punctures!

I resisted for the longest time, even riding gravel/CX with latex tubes and 40psi in 40mm tyres I was having fewer punctures and problems than friends with tubeless set ups.

Then Hawthorne cutting season started and I was repairing two or three punctures after every ride (in defense of the latex tubes, they typically didn't flat on the ride). 

Going tubeless turned out to be a bit of a nightmare, even with a purpose design Beto inflation tank. I learned the following:

1) Install new tyres with tubes first and leave for a day or two somewhere warm (indoors) to 'stretch' out any kinks in the bead.

2) Try and inflate with just a track pump, you might get lucky.

3) If that doesn't work, valve cores out! 

4) Try again with track pump and if that doesn't work it's air-tank/inflator time and maybe lubricating the beads (I try to resist this, the less mess the better!).

5) Once you can get them seated, pop one side off furthest from valve to put sealant in, but be neat! I slopped too much in and splashed it over the side of the bead and I must also have got it on the rim. This seemed to make it harded to get the tyre to seat again e.g. a tyre which had previously seated straight away with a track pump now needed multiple attempts with the valve core out and the inflation tank.

6) Don't go crazy with the lower pressures, I still prefer to keep them inflated such that rim strike is rare. I've seen mates pinch flat their tyres such that they couldn't be repaired again. Low pressures are a big advantage of tubeless but I definitely think you can go too low.

One more tip – if you're struggling to get them to seat, put them on with an inner tube to begin with and inflate until you hear both beads snap into place. You can then unseal one side of the tyre only and remove the tube, leaving the other sealed to the rim. You then only have to seat the other one with a track pump. I have Hunt all season wheels and really struggled fitting Schwalbe Durano tyres (not tubeless), but Hutchinsons (tubeless) went on without any tyre levers!

If it's any help, I also use Hunt All Season wheels and have run them tubeless from new.  They came ready fitted with good quality rim tape and tubeless valves so you won't have to buy those.  Fitting my Hutchinson tyres was a doddle, needing only minimal use of small levers and my weedy thumbs.  In order to get them to adopt a more friendly shape I did inflate them without sealant first and left them overnight.  This proved easy with just a track pump and took only a few minutes.

In use I needed to check pressures only every couple of weeks and the wheels have remained true, and lovely, for almost a year.  Good luck.

PS Not really relevant to your post but I gave up with the tubeless after about eight months.  For road use they were much more trouble than I had hoped, failing on two occasions to seal both large and tiny holes.  Your experience may be better.

If the wheels come set up with the tubeless tape, do it yourself. hawkinspeter explains very well how to do it.

One tip: as noted, try and inflate the tyre first without sealant. If that's tricky, you can use a C02 canister (don't do that with sealant, as it can freeze it and render it useless). Then you can deflate it after an hour, and put in sealant through the valve hole.

Oh, and some tyre/rim combos are much easier to fit than others. Conti GP TLEs are b*stards on most.

Give it a go yourself. You're unlikely to damage the wheels (unless you have a hard time getting the tyre on and resort to using a screwdriver or metal implements) and you'll certainly learn something.

Important points to remember:

• Properly applied tubeless rim tape is essential - your wheels may already have this fitted
• If you need to fit your own rim tape, make sure that it ends up nice and flat without wrinkles and make the valve hole with something round and pointy rather than a knife
• Lubricating the tyre beads makes it easier to seat the tyre - you can use dilute washing up liquid to do this first before putting the tyre on the wheel
• Remember that the middle of the rim bed is lower (i.e. smaller diameter) than the outsides, so push the tyre bead into the middle to give a tiny bit more play when trying to mount the tyre onto the rim
• I recommend trying to seat the tyre beads without using sealant first of all as it's a lot less messy and should give you some clue as to how airtight your setup is. If the beads bang into place without sealant, you can then deflate it and add sealant through the valve (if you've got a removable core and some kind of syringey thing that fits in the valve) or unseat one of the beads and pour some sealant into the tyre (typically a bit messy)
• Do it outside or somewhere that spilled sealant won't be a problem

When everything works fine, you can seat and inflate them with a normal track pump. When you've got a small air leak you may need to push a lot of air quickly into the tyre to seat it and that requires something like a tubeless air tank (e.g. https://road.cc/content/buyers-guide/21-best-bike-pumps-and-co2-inflators-183431).

If you try it yourself and struggle, take it to your LBS and they'll probably get it done in 5 minutes and make it look easy (probably by someone with bionic thumbs).

Personally I'd let Hunt set them up (assuming they still offer that service) then ride for a while and see if you prefer tubeless to tubed.

If you're going to buy your own tyres etc then I'd recommend Milkit valves, will make your life far easier in the long term.

Probably worth giving it a go yourself first with your standard track pump, a lot of modern tyre/wheel combos will seat easily (a lot will not!).

You shouldn't damage the wheels at all, just might make a bit of a mess!

If you can't get them to sit I'd go LBS before investing in new pumps etc.