Originally Posted by
scottfsmith
But I think a 1-gal would be fine for you. The tire either seats right away or never, so it is not like you need to run it for a long time.
I’ve been on road tubeless since ‘13 and currently have four models and five pairs of tubeless wheels on active duty and it is not my experience that tires seat immediately or never. Usually they do, but sometimes a little air working and pressure on the tread in the spot where the bead is loose is needed. I’ve had some rough goes, but never an unmountable tire. Sometimes it’s a tape issue, and sometimes it’s having sufficient volume and duration of air which makes the difference, but since there is no way to know which wheel/tire/tape combo is going to be troublesome or need which technique to mount, all we can do is gear up and be ready.
Regarding tank capacity, there are two things to be aware of. First is that a gallon of air isn’t much, and if a tire isn’t seating and air is escaping, you’ll blow through most of that in a couple of seconds and the compressor will run attempting to recover tank pressure. Further, small compressors are not only small in terms of tank size, but compressor power and output, and a .8 SCFM compressor will need to run longer than 3.0 SCFM compressor to maintain pressure, and it will not be able to provide as much pressure either. A 1 gal tank will pretty much run every time you need to mount a tire, which is exactly what the OP does not want.