Originally Posted by
VegasJen
You know, since you brought it up, I do have a question about that. I get a lot of goat heads and mesquite thorns out here. So if I go tubeless on my other bikes, I presume that just means I'll still get punctures but the tires will hold air until I get home. If that's the case, do I need to pull the tires off every week or two and remove the thorns and auto steel belt fragments and reseal the tires? Almost seems like there might be as much or more maintenance involved that way.
it depends on the type of puncture. something really tiny like a bit of steel wire, mostly you never even know. the tiny tiny hole gets immediately clogged from the inside by the sealant that gets pushed out by the air pressure. you may never see the evidence, and nothing needs to be done.
a thorn might be big enough that as riding you’d see and hear the PSHHH and some sealant either squirting or bubbling out. typically for that, you stop, remove it, and spin the tire around to assist in getting enough sealant pushed through the hole to seal up. after this, you either keep riding or if you lost a lot of air, pump up a bit. it sounds sketch but i had this happen on a 40+ mph 2,500’ descent, i slowed and stopped halfway, hit it with a CO2 cartridge, spun the tire and jumped back on. it was a piece of thorn in my front tire, i don’t want to think about sudden deflation at 45 on a tire without sealant.
a REALLY big hole, you either a) trash the tire or b) jam a “plug” in from the outside, add sealant through the valve opening, and reinflate. i like this one
https://shop.dynaplug.com/products/dynaplug®-pill which is tiny, fast, and super easy to use. if you were losing pressure from multiple good size thorn hits, you might pull them out and use a few of these.
you would normally never pull the tire off to do anything except trash it for a new one. tubeless sounds complicated but it’s just different - and the various things you might do (add air, add sealant, plug a large hole) are all super easy.