New Salsa Marrakesh wheels and tubeless
 

Can anyone with a new Marrakesh advise whether the WTB ST i19 TCS 2.0 wheels come with tubess tape already applied. I'm considering possibly converting my 2020 Marrakesh Sora.

I've emailed WTB and had no reply. There is a question on the Marrakesh Sora page asking the same question and they reply 'The WTB rims are tubeless ready, but you will need to purchase tape...' which seems a bit odd for a rim supposedly tubeless ready.

Can anyone therefore confirm please.

I would trust the response to the question. Tubeless-ready could means that the rim is a UST design.

Ask Salsa: https://salsacycles.com/support/contact

I suspect you will need tubeless tape along with other material and equipment to go tubeless. Tubeless has never really caught on in loaded touring. Many bikes sold in past five years have "tubeless ready" rims/wheels but hardly any tourists bother to go that route. For the touring niche, tubeless seems to be more a marketing point than a actual useful feature. Tubeless is more popular for mountain biking where there are apparently more performance benefits.

Google tubeless site:bikeforums.net/touring/ (copy and paste) to find old "tubeless" threads.

That does make sense thanks. Worst case I buy tape and have it spare for the future if not needed. Cheers

I have purchased tubeless-ready rims for my fatbike (not WTB) and I had to apply the tape of my choice. On the other hand, my Giant Defy which is tubeless came all setup.

Oh, I bikepack/tour on my fatbike. Would never go back to tubes now.

get thee to a nunnery with wifi so you can go on youtube and watch lots of vids on prepping for tubeless, tape application and all the other stuff that I vaguely know about but am not really up on cuz I havent done tubeless yet.

like the aus guy says, there are lots of people who swear by it if they are riding in thorn galore country, so its just a matter of trying it out and getting the processes down.