Originally Posted by
metz1295
New to mountain biking and new tubeless tires. I'm a little confused. It's my understanding that if a tubeless tire is punctured, the sealant inside the tire will seal the puncture and that if the puncture is so bad that it won't seal then you're gonna need a new tire anyway. So, why is it that every "essential" mountain bike gear list I look up has tubeless puncture repair kits and pumps on the list?.
Flats don’t lend themselves to such binary classification.
They run the whole range from self-fixing (with sealant) to fixable with assistance to entirely beyond repair.
MTBers can end up a fair distance away from the nearest road, which tends to promote considerable interest in being able to ride out even after encountering mechanical issues. So anything that’s easy to carry, and increases your repair ability has a given customer base.
When I did a ghetto-tubeless conversion on my winter wheels, I discovered that one of the tires leaked through the hole left by a missing stud. And sealant alone wouldn’t plug it. So I made a small tuft of that fibrous stuff that can be used to seal plumbing threads and poked it in there, and through the tire. Within minutes, the leak stopped.