L44wsa

I bought a Scott sub 10 4 weeks ago with Kenda booster tires on it. In the 4 weeks I’ve had the bike it has now done 300 mile on roads/gravel paths and a few trails and has had 7 separate punctures.

is this normal? Or are the tires just poor?

I’ve just bought some Conti-contact plus, will these help?

shoota 

You'll have to let us know. Where do you ride? What is causing the punctures?

L44wsa

as above I ride on gravel tow paths, roads, and a few mud trails but these are few and far between. I’ve only found one item in the tire itself and that was a thorn, all the others I have no idea how they occurred.

shoota 

Probably thorns then. I’d recommend going tubeless.

L44wsa

any recommendations?

unterhausen

you might think about asking your bike shop to convert it to tubeless. Going tubeless is the best thing I did for my gravel riding. If you have thorns in the area especially. I had 20 flats in the year before I switched my gravel bike to tubeless. None after.

wsteve464

My first gravel bike, after 20 year off the bike, came with tubes I thought about selling it. Here in So Cal we have goathead thorns seems like I got a flat every couple of rides, one ride 3 times. Even tried Slime tubes, didn't work. Finally researched tubeless and set it up. 3 flats in the last 2 years, 2 sidewall punctures and one dried sealant would not seal. Even ran over a mother goathead plant ended up with 10-15 stickers in the tire, didn't go flat.

TUBELESS for the win

Witterings

I'd been thinking about ging tubeless for ages but a fried beat me to it and he's just thrown in the towel and gone back to tubed,

It was a nightmare to set up even with tubless ready rims and tyres using Stans, the tyres kept leaking where they'd been punctured by thorns in the past and when he eventually did stop it as soon as he got another puncture it didn't seal properly and just kept going down so he gave up.

I had a spate a while ago of 6 punctures in 6 rides, I changed my 29er's tyres to Smart Sam Plus's and because they're so good now also use the 40c version on my gravel bike in the winter.

alo

I have started running tubeless sealant in tubes. You can have the best of both worlds. I did it because I don't want a mess when I change a tire.

ronin4740

While I'm still new to gravel my tubeless experiment last year on my road bike was pretty disheartening. The casing and rubber on a road bike tire isn't as thick as it is on a gravel or MTB tire and lost three full sets of tires in under 2K miles due to bits of wire entering the tire and being pushed out through the casing and rubber again, causing a blister/delamination of the rubber from the internal casing. Net result - destroyed tire.

Went back to tubular tires and didn't have a flat the remainder of the year.

However I intend to stick with tubeless on my gravel bike as a knobby tire is beefier and less likely to pick up the same types of debris which were killing my road bike tires on a given ride. Reno is also lousy with goat head thorns but I'm confident that the lower pressure in the tire along with the denser construction of gravel tires in general will allow the sealant to do it's job and seal most punctures.

...I am however keeping a CO2 cartridge and a spare tube in the saddle back for the foreseeable future.