2. Front Wheel

Once again, you can see how much the spoke nipples protrude. But the big issue is how little space there is on the outside of each nipple.

These next photos show how little of the tape is connecting with the wheels on the outside of the nipples:

This photo shows the gel like tape with (left side of line) and without its green protective layer (right side of line). On the right side of the photo you can see how smooth the gel tape is applied.

After applying the second layer of tape, it is scary for how little of it seems to be sealing properly on the outside of each nipple:

Before getting the tire refitted, the wheel had been sitting in a hot car and I found that this really softened up everything and I was able to better seal around each nipple (unfortunately no photo of this).

So I strongly recommend that after applying both layers of tape, to get the whole wheel assembly heated up nicely and rework all the tape, and keep reworking the tape as the wheel cools down, to get the best possible seal !!!

Unfortunately, with the front wheel, I found I was loosing about 1 PSI of pressure each day, so after filling up the bath tub and immersing a section of the tire and wheel rim at a time I found that there was a very slow leak at one of the spoke nipples. So I recorded which spoke and took the wheel back to the bike shop and had the tire removed so that I could inspect the Outex system. This is what I found:

As you can see, the protective tape layer has not sealed properly around the middle spoke nipple, but around the other nipples you can see the the tire pressure has really forced down the tape creating a very good seal. In the next photo, you can see another spot where the protective tape has not sealed down properly, but there was no sign of any air leak from this spot.

I added some extra tape (gel layer and protective layer) on the two bad spots, as shown, and had the tire put back on:

At this stage, I still appear to have a very slow leak with the front tyre with the tyre pumped up to 43psi. Having left the tyre for a week at the high pressure, I have now dropped it back down to the normal 32psi, and I will continue to monitor it.

With the rate in drop in pressure low enough not to be a problem over one day (or more), and having seen how well the tape has sealed down, I have now done two short rides (up to 250km).