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Old 10-26-20, 05:25 AM
  #20  
joewein
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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Bikes: Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer, Bike Friday Pocket Rocket

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I'm in my 9th year of randonneuring and have had had exactly ONE puncture in all the brevets I have entered. It prompted me to give tubeless a try for about half a year, but then I went back to tubes.

I calculated the average time between punctures on my Babyshoe Pass with Schwalbe tubes at 14 months, with the longest puncture-free streak extending to 22 months. If I lived in goat head country in the US Southeast this may be different but tubeless is basically a solution to a problem I don't have. The single puncture in a brevet was an outlier (and I finished anyway).

Running tubeless created more problems for me than it solved. For example, when you do puncture, plan B is usually to install a tube but that requires removal of the tubeless valve, which in my case couldn't have been done without a pair of pliers, which I don't normally carry. Topping up sealant through the valve, without removing the valve core, turned out to be a very bad idea, clogging the valve and slowing down air flow when pumping up the tires. Regular sealant top-ups would almost certainly cost me more time overall than the occasional tube swap after a puncture.
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