Caliper

They worked great for me when I lived in an area with goatheads.

Just how low are you pushing it on the road? I use the Berto tire pressure app to set pressures. It recommends a far lower pressure than I used to run but I've never gotten a pinch flat from their numbers even on a tubed tire. For a 205lb total weight I'm running 60F/90R on 28mm tires and 34F/50R on 40's. When I spent an afternoon doing rolldown testing on my gravel bike with the 40mm tires, I found that their formula gives pretty much the lowest rolling resistance and by the time I had let out 4-6psi that I was rolling noticeably less far so I've basically stuck with its recommendations thus far.

DaveSSS 

Riding without a backup tube or inflation method doesn't sound real smart. I've used tubes for the life of more than one tire, so I don't see any cost savings. I've logged 5400 miles in the last 18 months (when I returned to cycling after 8 years off) without a puncture. I've never ruined a tire in 40 years of riding, but I know it does happen. I still carry two tubes and two co2 cartridges, just in case.

Depending on what brand of wheel is used, you my pay substantially more for tubeless wheels. That's slowly changing, as tubeless extends to lower levels, like the fulcrum racing 3.

Seattle Forrest

Lately - last couple years - the only thing that's completely flatted me has been a sharp rock embedded in the roadway.

Psimet2001 

Agreed. If I wouldn't have been carrying a tube and CO2 on the ride I started the thread with then I wouldn't have made it home without uber or a phone call. Tubeless does not mean not riding with a flat kit.

Psimet2001 

I'd take issue with using the term "easily".

Sure I see a ton of pinch flats on tubed systems and that is something that doesn't happen with tubeless... but...

Pinch flats only happen when you're running too low of a pressure for the conditions. It's not like it's a 1-2 psi kind of thing either. Most of the ones coming in the shop it's a case of "when did you pump up the tires last?" = "Oh probably in the spring when I first took the bike out" "You know it's August, right?"

Only times I have ever pinch flatted during a race was pushing tubed cyclocross to sub 25 psi. Those who run even remotely correct pressures only pinch flat when they hit a big obstacle like a deep pothole or curb at speed.

So I wouldn't say that tubes pinch flat "easily" unless you never pump up your tires and are always running into curbs and deep potholes at high speed.

Psimet2001 

For the record - got another nice day out and decided super late to get another ride in outside today. Ran into the shop and went to grab my gravel bike - tire hasn't been fixed yet as I haven't been able to get a new one yet. Grab the road bike with tubes and with a couple of seconds to air it up I was on my way. No flat. Flat kit stayed in its normal place on the bike ready for whenever I needed it

Also - the bit on the running sealant in tubes: just doesn't work. We often will try sealant in tubes inside cross tubulars that use an inner-tube construction once they have already flatted. If we are lucky we can get it to last long enough to get them to the start line with it but it isn't a long term solution. More often than not the sealant just starts bubbling out of everything along the casing of the tire as the casings aren't sealed. As for the why not run it side of the equation - sealant will foul valve stems like crazy. Sure they are replaceable but with deeper rims it will also start to foul the extenders and if they are aluminum the ammonia and other compounds in the sealant can just slowly block the extender or rot it away entirely. I see it happen weekly during cross.

noodle soup

Have you ever ridden at Bootleg Canyon outside Las Vegas? Terrain like that is all over the SW, and rocky trails like those eat up tubes, even when properly inflated. I would check inflation on our rental bikes daily, and pinch flats were still quite common.Switching to tubeless saved a ton of time/money.

Seattle Forrest

I keep my flat kit in a water bottle. The bike looks better that way, and it's pretty convenient. Not great in the summer, sometimes I'll leave it behind to be able to carry more water. When I used to ride with tubes, I'd be nervous the rest of a ride after getting a flat, I'd use my one tube and feel naked and exposed without another spare. Now that I get about one flat per year on average, it just doesn't bother me at all not to have my flat kit. I know a lot of people will think that's foolish, but I like having less stress, especially when it's justified.

DaveSSS 

Particularly when it's so easy to put a tube and inflator in a sandwich bag in your jersey pocket.

L134 

I’m curious about this because I’ve been riding my tubulars without sealant until I get a puncture after which I put sealant in and it seems to work just fine. I got a very slow leak after 1000 miles on a Veloflex V. Injected sealant and in the past 200 miles had another slow leak which the sealant cured then, today, I pulled a 1” brad out of the tire when I got home from my ride (just happened to see it). Pssst, a little bubbling. I spun the tire and pumped it back up and it is holding fine. I was oblivious to having picked up the brad during the ride, presumably because of the sealant.

I did acquire a used Fmb cyclocross tire that wouldn’t hold air. I tried sealant as it had always worked for me. Big mistake - as you described. I was able to clean out the mess and replace the tube. This was all approached as a learning experience and it was. My conclusion is, if the tire will hold air when pumped up, sealant will seal a slow leak and provide future protection. If the tire won’t hold any air, skip the sealant.

I have also injected sealant through a valve without a removable core on another used tire I acquired with a slow leak. It worked and I’ve had no serious clogging issues - in other words, I can still get air in and out as needed.

masi61

What specific items should be in your tubeless flat kit? I was curious what kind of shop rag works best for mopping up wet sealant for a flatted tubeless tire out on the road. It seems you need to cleanly wipe away the latex sealant in order to fit a partly inflated butyl inner tube in there for a drama free roadside repair to get you home.

Or: is it equally effective to forgo the inner tube for your flatted tubeless tire and to plug it (with one of the available plug kits) then just refresh the sealant and then re-inflate with CO2?

I’m getting ready to start training on my used Dura Ace 7850 tubeless wheels that are going to be running Hutchinson Atom 23mm front and Hutchinson Fusion 5 All Season 23mm rear tires with Stan’s or Effetto Mariposa (foaming) sealant. I had no issues mounting the rear and getting a good bead seal but the Atom front took forever for me to think up a plan to improve my chances of a good bead seal. I finally got it sealing and am about to road test this wheel and tire tubeless combo which looks it will be fast and grippy. I just hope I don’t lose pressure on a ride due not so much to a thorn or glass shard, but a bead air leak from the square tire bead somehow not lining up with the rim shelf momentarily causing a burp type flat or even just getting diffuse microbubbles to be allowed to somehow escape from the bead.

Seattle Forrest

Sometimes I bring a spare frame or two in case the crabon assplodes.

Racing Dan

Imo you are conflating on road cycling with off road cycling and I have honestly only had one pinch flat my entire life, - from hitting a pothole after not bothering to inflate my tyres.


Its like the (potential) downsides to tubes are inflated to make a case for tubeless. I mean sure, if you live in goathead hell and want to ride soft tyres and dont know how to patch a tube, then im sure tubeless are both cheaper and better and less faff. But to a lot of road riders this is just not reality. As mentioned before, I solved my flatting issues switching from unprotected tyres to basic kevlar belted ones. They are perfectly fine and serviceable and less than 1/3 the price of say GP5000 TL and amazingly the same weight, if you factor in 40 ml sealant or a light 85g tube. The other route was to spend a lot on TL tyres, sealant, a booster pump and new rims.


Btw, is it true you are not supposed to use tyre lever on TL tyres? Several YT videos mention this issue, but really, how are you supposed to get the tyre off of the rim without damaging the bead ??

masi61

If tubeless tires can be removed without tire levers, this would be best in order to fully preserve the square rim bead. If you must use tire levers to get that 1st bead off the sidewall, my suggestion (coming from my recent brief intro to tubeless and also my experience with tight fitting open tubulars) would be to use a flat type tire lever such as the blue Schwalbe levers and not the thicker Park Tools or Pedro’s reinforced type levers. You can place 2 Schwalbe levers close together and lever them carefully at the same time to get some daylight under the bead then insert a 3rd Schwalbe lever another inch or two down the bead which will then permit you to safely pry back the llevers to free the bead enough to then go back to using your hands only & leaving the square rubber tire bead un-damaged.

Racing Dan

Maybe Im old fashioned, but I never even attempted to remove a tyre without levers. Much less a tight fitting TL tyre. Using wide plastic levers seem like sound advice.

WhyFi

That's funny, as I see it the other way around whenever tubeless discussions pop up - some (and they're usually people with little-to-no practical experience with tubeless) like to harp on the the hassle in a catastrophic event, while completely ignoring how it makes a non-issue out of the vast majority of punctures.

Never heard of this and never experienced an issue related to lever usage. Prolly just more FUD from the anti-tubeless.

Anna_Sazzi

There are tubeless specific tire levers. I guess the old style are not good with tubeless tires?
I cannot post a photo but google IRC tubeless tire lever. One end of the lever is for installing a tire, the other end to remove the tire.

noodle soup

Absolutely. I was talking about a mountain bike area, and riding off paved roads.
I have used tire levers with tubeless tires for years, and never had an issue.

I'm sure you saw it in a video, but it's not a common problem in reality. Some of the warnings on these videos remind me of the Happy Fun Ball disclaimer.

noodle soup

Most of the time when I'm removing a tubeless tire, the tire is being replaced anyway. I use a single yellow Pedro's lever, and have never had one damaged (that I know of).

jadocs

Re: Cost of tubeless tires.

- You can get two GP5000TL with 4oz of Orange Seal right now on eBay for $115.99 and free shipping
- I use Yksion Pro UST tires and I can get two for $64.99 plush shipping.

Re: Grabbing a tubed bike vs. tubeless bike that has been sitting for a while.

- Properly fit/installed tubeless tires do not loose anymore air than a tubed tire after sitting for a while. You will have to check and top off as required on both...it's a wash.

Re: Time lost dealing with a flat that won't seal on a tubeless tire.

- Some considerations: How much time did you not have to deal with flats and go through a hassle because the tubeless tire sealed itself without your knowledge. The only time you need to put a tube in a tubeless tire is for cuts that won't seal. All others use a plug and in one minute your back on the road.

Re: Checking sealant every 3-4 months.

- Takes about as much time as letting the air out, removing the core, adding a little bit of sealant, putting the core back on and pumping it back up. Literally a few minutes.
- If I'm honest with you, I do not check and refill every 3-4 months. I have found that I still have plenty of sealant (orange seal) even after 6 months. How do I know this? because I took the tire off my bike to patch a puncture that sealed itself and there was plenty of sealant and no signs of drying out.

WhyFi

I learned that it's a good idea to be a little more regular with rear tire checks, though. It's not so much a problem of the sealant drying out, but of unnoticed punctures using up all of the sealant. I've had front tires be full and happy on one dose, from new to threadbare, while the rear tires were bone dry in 8 weeks. Basically, I'll vary the frequency of my checks based on conditions; I'll check more frequently in the spring, when it's wet and there's still a lot of leftover road debris, than I will in the summer.

kingston 

I still use tubes. I'm not opposed to tubeless, but there is no question that it would have been both more expensive and more time consuming for me in 2019.

I rode around 6k miles last year and had 4 flats which is a lot more than most years:

1. Wasn't paying attention to where I was going, ran over a broken beer bottle and slashed the front tire tire on my recumbent. Had to boot it to get home and threw the tire away. Would have been a catastrophic failure with tubeless
2. Hit a pothole on a descent at night on a 400k and got a pinch flat on the front. Tubeless probably would have prevented that one. Luckily there was a streetlight at the bottom of the hill so it was an easy 5 minute fix
3. Picked up a piece of flint in the rear tire on a fondo in the Santa Monica mountains on my travel bike. I have to deflate the tires to get the wheels in the S&S case with that one so I don't think tubeless would work for those wheels anyway
4. Finally got my first flat on the commuter bike I have been using since 1992 with the same tires and tubes. Replaced both tires and tubes for under thirty bucks, so I should be set on that bike until I retire and get rid of the bike

Like some of the other old hoarders here, I have a lot of bikes and wheels that still work just fine at my speeds, so converting to tubeless isn't really something I will seriously consider until I move out of my suburban home and downsize to just a couple of bikes.

Marci

For me it was an unseen piece of glass. But I was not tubeless, but I still had to walk bike back as I didn't have the tube to fix it. Thankfully it was only a mile. Even had to buy a new tire as it just wrecked it.
I remember as a teen I kept blowing out tires, Dad finally bought me solid tires. It was an OLD 10 speed in the early 70's so no clue what they were but with that went my endless flats and they lasted until I got my drivers license. I didn't notice a difference in ride, but I was young.
And then I didn't ride a bike until the mid 80's when my car broke down and we were too broke to buy another one at the time.
I see now they make solid tires again. In fun colors too. LOL But I doubt I will go that way anytime soon.

63rickert

I will bow to your cross experience but do use sealant in road tubulars and have used cross tires as road tires in winter. Just no problems for three years. Has sealed every flat. Flats prevented - no idea. Sealant goes in tube after first flat. Still lots of useful life on tires not in daily use. I do not use extenders. The only time a valve core became badly fouled simply holding it under running hot water cleared it.

Sealant needs pressure to direct it to the hole. Perhaps the problem is CX runs at such low pressure sealant does not know where to go. Or something else is different because of low pressure.

Olefeller77 

I hope this is not out of place. I just got a Specialized M4 S Works that has light rims fitted with Bontrager LT 3 26" X 2" tubeless tires new enough that it still wears the nibs. I was told the bike sat untouched for 4 years in a storage unit. My take from the conversations here is that I have little or no flat protection left. Should I visit a shop before riding the nice day we have coming on Wed.?