DiabloScott

If you want real nice ride quality, you should be looking at sew-ups.
There is certainly an advantage to tubeless with big low pressure tires in areas with lots of puncture risk.
But for 27mm or less, the hassle is high, the benefit is low, and the ride quality is a compromise.

DOS

I haven't found them to be a hassle, honestly. Yeah set up was a bit more complicated, but not that hard. No flats for 2 and half years eliminated a lot of hassle with clinchers.

squirtdad

and a better ride would be a high quality tubed tire with light tubes

bgdoyle

But then I have to take them apart and clean everything.
Actually I did look at using lightweight tubes but I had a hard time finding any 28mm tubes. Figgered they were thin enough don't stretch 'em any more.

bgdoyle

I would run the pressure lower but I need to loose a bit of weight. I think I'm a bit heavy (245) right now. If I loose what I want this year (30lbs) then I can 'speriment.

squirtdad

Good luck with your quest, I will tilt at other tire combo issues, so to speak

fwiw

this is what I am using for tubes with my Vittoria corsa g 28mm https://biketubebrand.com/road-tubes...rformance-tube they say they cover 23-30 mm. I am using 5800 ultegra hubs mavic open pro rims

I am 265 and run these at 115 (run challenge tubular at 130 on a team miyata and it is an amazing ride) I am going to get a new tubular wheelset (5800 ultegra hubs mavic rims) and put the same tires in tubular on so I can get as close as possible to apples apples on a high end clincher vs same high end tubular ride compare.

WizardOfBoz

Ok, I'm gonna install tubed tires as my tubeless tires wear out.

Two holes in rear tire. Happens. The supposed big advantage of tubeless - that leaks self-seal, didn't happen. Bontrager Sealant didn't seal and I had two rubber (about 3/8 inch diameter) boogers on the outside of the tire where stuff had leaked out. And the tire was flat.

If the sealant doesn't work, need to repair the tire, right? Got the Hutchinson Tubeless repair kit. How do the French say it? Horrible! I'll report that in a separate thread. Took the tire off. Used the kit (it was horrible, did I mention that?). Not sure that the patches actually adhered. Got them kind of stuck on. Tried to remount the tires. I couldn't do it! Might be my hand strength is getting weak, but even so, I'm a big (formerly) strong guy. I couldn't get the Bontrager R3 TLR tires on the Bontrager Paradigm Elite TLR rim. Not with soapy water, not with any ruse I tired. I was humiliated - I had to take it to the bike shop. The first guy couldn't do it. The head guy at the shop finally got them installed. I can't imagine me having a flat with these tubeless tires in the middle of nowhere. I'd be screwed. I would strongly recommend testing any tubeless rim/tire combo you get, if you get them, to ensure that you can field mount the tire. The Bontrager tire and rim was impossible for me (and at least one mechanic at the Trek shop). Maybe other brands are easier.

Anyway, the shop aired these up for me without any sealant. A little spit over the leaks showed bubbles that confirmed that the horrible Hutchinson Tubeless repair kit hadn't worked. Got home, deflated the tires, pulled out the valve core, and used my syringe setup to add 40ml of sealant (probably overkill, but I wanted these to seal). BTW, the syringe setup is, IMHO, the way to go. You shake up your bottle of sealant, suck the sealant in from the bottle (this allows you to suck from near the bottom of the bottle, and so you get some of the flakes in the sealant before they settle out). Then you stick the tube in the valve and cleanly deliver the sealant. I'm using the Odier kit, which I like. This did appear to seal the leaks, but one leak protrudes a bit (like a tiny zit) and so I suspect that with wear, the patch the sealant will wear through and I'll loose tire integrity. So after all the work and expense of trying to fix this thing, I have no confidence in it.

So the big advantage of tubeless (it seals and you don't get flats) didn't work. A product to fix leaks (the Hutchinson Tubeless Repair kit - I should say it was horrible) didn't seal the leak, didn't adhere properly, and didn't do what I really wanted - to add confidence to the fix of my tire. Until I got the syringe, every change of the tire was an adventure requiring a roll of paper towels, and a floor mopping, if not doing a load of laundry. Not reliable. Hard to service. Messy. And for road bikes, dubious benefit.


I can see the benefit for folks running larger tires at lower pressures, but running tubeless on 26 mm road tires at 116psi seems to have no advantages, and huge disadvantages and inconvenience.

DrIsotope

Well, I've put ~9,000 miles on 700x25 tubeless @ 90psi, and I'm 210lbs. You pressure is either unnecessarily high, or you weigh like 270lbs.

In all those miles, I've never had a flat. Yes, I've had incidents that resulted in the loss of the tire-- punctured by screws, glass cuts, etc-- but nothing that wouldn't have also destroyed a tubed tire.

So for me it's tubeless in everything until a better solution comes along.

squirtdad

I would call loss of a tire a flat if the incident caused it to go flat, even if it did destroy the tire I have had tubed tires go with a screw.....(bump bump bump of the screw on the pavement) and just took the screew out, put a new tube in and kept going.

WizardOfBoz

I weigh 245, so the 116 psi pressure, at least for the rear (which is where the leaks were) is about right, per Bicycle tire pressure calculator
I do note, from that website, that the front tire pressure should be much lower than I've been riding, about 95psi. So thanks for pointing that out.

In many years of sporadic riding using tubed 700c tires at pretty high pressures, I almost never had a flat of any kind. I think I probably went 15 years where I'd ride my bike, hang it up, and come back the next day, week, month, or year, and it would have lost almost no air. So flats haven't been a concern.

I think that the two leaks in my tubeless tires were caused by glass cuts or something like that. So if most of the leaks I experience are cuts, and cuts in tubeless tires are really hard for me to repair myself (and impossible for me to repair on the road) I'm way ahead avoiding that. Plus, no sealant all over when I do replace the tube.

I'm probably just a reactionary curmudgeon, though.

WizardOfBoz

That's kind of what I've been used to. Although the tires were not so tight, so I could remove the tire, invert it (to stretch the inside), and then carefully feel the tire inside to ensure that no residual glass, screw, or bit of steel wire remained. Restore to right-side out, pop in a tube, and you're good to go.

You can point out that 40ml (about 40g) of sealant weighs less than a Conti Race tube (105g). But if a cut or puncture that you can't fix leaves you absolutely unable to proceed then the slight weight savings pales in comparison to being completely unable to proceed.

If weight matters that much, one could use a Conti "Light" (65g) or "Supersonic" (50g) tube. And you'd be able to field service the wheel.

RubeRad

It sounds to me like you have suboptimal tubeless tires/rims. Or maybe if that same combination works for a lot of others, then you got either a bum rim or a bum tire through back luck.

You could spend a lot of time and money chasing an equipment combination that works well for you tubeless.

Or you could buy tubes.

Personally given your experience, I would be buying tubes.

Tubeless technology is still developing, especially for high-pressure road applications. Maybe in 5-10 years cheap robust road tubeless rims and tubes will be ubiquitous and interchangeable. You can always re-evaluate and try to dip a toe in the water later.

It would be pretty cool if bike shops could have loaner tubeless wheel/tire sets. Somebody could take them home, put them on their bike, ride them around, see if they like the feel. Unmount and try to remount them, see if it's easy enough. If all is good, they make a purchase.

DrIsotope

The last screw I picked up I rode 25 more miles on it. Took the screw out when I got home, put in a plug, and rode it for a few hundred more miles. I just replaced a front tire at ~4,500 miles, a week shy of it's 1st birthday. Never had to break the bead during that year.

My "flats" tend to fall into this category:



I noticed the slash about 2 weeks ago, and hoped that it hadn't made it through to the cords. But it indeed had. No tire survives this, tubed or otherwise. I had no qualms about ordering an identical replacement tire. Stuff happens.

Teamprovicycle

this is no winner in the war on tubeless only pain and suffering !!!

bgdoyle

Well maybe we are in a undeclared truce... I just check the tire pressure before I ride now and all seems to work. The Pro Ones ride better than the Gravelkings and there seem to be less vibration. I have about 150 miles on them (22 a day, 4X a week). The only real suffering is when I don't ride. Really helps keep the mind clear and attitude right.

ronin4740

Perhaps not on the topic but I just tried out the bicycle pressure calculator linked by WizardOfBoz... I weigh 240lbs. the bike I'm riding is 19 lbs... so I put in 260 lbs.

the website wants me to pressurize the front to 108 and the rear to 167... Pretty sure that's over the max inflation of the Gavia tires on the Giant bike...

Have been riding them at around 110 each thus far without issues. Going to drop them down to around 95 this weekend and see how it goes.

ThermionicScott 

Anyone on a road bike should use 45/55 rather than 40/60.

You ought to consider tires bigger than 23mm, if for no other reason than you could be travelling the same speeds in a little more comfort.

ronin4740

Ya... Fairly sure the Gavia's weren't the best choice but that's what was on the bike when I bought it and I'd asked the shop to reuse the front tire when they converted them to tubeless figuring it'd save me a few $$$.

The shop decided to put two new Gavia tires on the bike, ignoring my request... After a bit of discussion they discounted one of them and waived the charges for converting the wheels/tires to tubeless.

Next set I'll go with a wider tire. Should make the TCR a bit more comfy

Leebo

OP, take out the valve core to add sealant.

WizardOfBoz

As you noted, this is at 90 psi and 25x700c, which is close enough to my 116 and 26x700c. So, first, I probably have less confidence in the plug approach, and didn't want a chunk of bacon strip sticking out of the tire. I'll try that before removing the tire again.

But if the balloon goes up and I have a gash like the one you've shown, I'll have to remove the tire. And if I had a folding tubeless in my bike bag, I wouldn't be able to get it mounted on my wheel (at least on the Paradigm Elites. I haven't tried this on my Race XLs).

I do think that the Hutchinson kit is a fail. I note that Velox has a tubeless patch kit that looks more like a tube patch kit, using rubber cement and not super glue. So choosing Hutchinson was my mistake.

But here's a question: do folks feel that the tubeless tires give a better ride for road bikes on paved routes? I get the goal of tubeless for off-road, fewer pinch flats and fewer small leaks. But for road tires?

I feel a little difference, but not that much.

robertorolfo

Did you put the right tire size in the calculator?

ronin4740

I guess not. When I update the selection to 25mm it kicks back 104/130

DOS

Yes. Tubeless rims are wider than standard road rims, which means more air volume in the tire so I am riding significantly lower pressure without fear of pinch flats. The improved suppleness of the ride is by far the best aspect of tubeless, even more so than the puncture protection.

Teamprovicycle

i am against the valve core sealant adding method because you can clot the core and if you need to use a hand pump it will be almost impossible to add air , i had to dismount my tire one time and use a small straw and pliers to fish a booger out , in general i think sealant is mostly a joke , it will seal small hole but anything serious with usually need a patch ,

i much prefer to just leave a bit of tire off pour my sealant in and then rotate the tire , mount the tire , and that way i know i got all the glitter particles and the right amount , and less mess on my wheels !!!

Teamprovicycle

for racing the only tubeless tires ive run are pro ones at 23mm that measure 25 mm , and they grip way more than tubed gp4000s , i can take a turn way harder , but on most courses its not really a factor i can notice ,

as for comfort im a really hard tough person , so i am not bothered by comfort to degree others are , i feel like i have reach a comfort level that others cant and the things that bother some dont ever even come to mind ,

so i do notice that tubeless pressure seems to be way harsher than tubes , at like 90psi , i feel way more bumps on the tubeless , than at 110 on the tubes !!!