Tandem Tom

Though we have never used it in all of our touring I thought might inquire here!
We will be riding across northern Nebraska,Iowa and then back to Ohio starting in September. I have heard that there are those nasty goat heads out that way. So I just heard about Muc-Off Inner Tube Sealant.
So wondering about anyone's experience with this product and sealant in general.
Our rims are not tubeless compatible so not going that route.
Thanks!

Ghazmh

I have a gravel bike that is tubeless. I have an uncoordinated mix of tubes with and without removable cores on the rest of my bikes, in my supply drawer and in my saddle bags. I heard on a cycling podcast that adding sealant in tubes is now a thing. My road bike happened to have tubes with removable cores so I added 1 1/2 oz of Stans sealant to each tube. I fully intend to do the same to my touring bike after I swap in tubes with removable cores.

staehpj1

I had bad luck with sealant in tubes. More mess than it was worth. It just delayed the leaks and patches didn't hold. Maybe if we tried different sealants or something we would have had better luck, but we had such a disaster with slime tubes that I never tried again. We ultimately pulled them out and replaced them with regular tubes.

FWIW, I find the biggest factor in minimizing thorn flats in goat head country with regular tube setups is avoiding rolling off the pavement and when you do, checking the tires for thorns before heading out again. If riding off road in thorn country, I'd go tubeless for sure.

Oh, and I hate those thick thornproof tubes. They weigh a ton, kill the nice supple ride, and only delay the time it takes for the thorn to get through. At least that has been my experience.

Tubeless on the other hand has worked great on the bike where I have used it (I have not toured tubeless)! The Stans setup on my MTB is awesome. I went from at least weekly thorn flats to no flats at all. Zero!

Edit:
Maybe I should have mentioned that my experience with slime tubes was in 2007 so just maybe there has been some significant progress in sealant technology. About all I can say for sure is that I found the 2007 Slime tubes to be terrible and my fairly recent (2016) Stans setup to be awesome.

Happy Feet

Recently I've been adding stans sealant to tubes that have slow leaks, particularly my fat bike which was frustrating me to no end. Slow leak with no detected hole. Sealed right away. Our local problem is blackberry thorns which leave pin prick holes that are hard to find.

Tubeless would do the same but I am still not there for a touring bike as a flat would be problematic in the field. You need to pack extra sealant, a large hole repair kit and an extra tube if you can't get the tire to seat with a hand pump. In that regard, stans sealant in the tube is the next best compromise.

cyccommute 

“Tubeless” tires don’t stop flats from happening. The sealant used in the tires stop flats. Sealant in tubes will do the same. You should also remove the object causing the puncture no matter what system you are using. A thorn in the tire is going to flex and open the puncture each time it flexes. It won’t seal properly and will continue to leak.

Sealant isn’t perfect either. I’ve been on rides where people using sealant had flats (because they didn’t remove the thorn) and I, using plastic tire liners and regular tubes, didn’t. Some of it was luck, some of it was knowing where the goatheads were going to be the worst and not plowing though them. Don’t mock the Goathead Gods, however. I got smacked the next time I did the ride because I mocked them.

Personally, I don’t use sealant for a couple of reasons. It can be very mess both in installation and during use. Every time someone comes into the local co-op to install tubeless, everyone disappears because they don’t want to deal with the mess. A blowout becomes a very different event with sealant. The sealant also dries out, whether in a tube or tire and the rate of “drying” is related to temperature.

I’ve used...and had good luck...with tire liners for the last 40 years. No, it’s not perfect but neither is sealant.

str

nasty goat heads? )) summer 2017 in Castilla y Leon a friend and me had 18 flats in two days!! yes 18!! )) getting the first flats we did not understand anything, we fixed one wheel and when we had finished to fix the second wheel the first was already flat again! the tires had several LITTLE goat heads stuck!

don't ride on the edge of roads and off roads.

Tourist in MSN

I bought one of those for mountain biking in North Dakota, Maah Daah Hey trail. The tube got very thin right at the valve stem. I used that on the rear, on the front used a regular tube. In both tubes added Slime sealant. I chose Slime as it was water soluable for cleanup.

We stopped to take a break where the trail crossed a gravel road, while having some water suddenly I hear this sound of escaping air. The thin spot on the thick tube got a puncture for no apparent reason, too close to the valve stem to patch. I blame the thin spot, that was where any stress of the tube would be concentrated.

I will never again buy a thorn resistant tube.

I do not have a suspension mountain bike, I put a suspension fork on my expedition bike:



I do not think of Nebraska as being that thorny, I would just use my normal touring tires but would be very careful when off pavement in a campsite.

On a different trip, I accidently forgot to be careful in the campsite, picked up quite a few thorns in the hundred or so feet that I rode the bike into the site. This was in West Texas, that was thorn country. This was on my folding bike. I did not use sealant. I was careful to remove all thorns before I started to roll again, none of us on that week long trip had any punctures. Most people were riding road bikes, it was a van supported trip with ACA.



I have no opinion on Slime versus other brands of sealant, if I was going to ride in thorn country again I would probably use Slime since I own some. And have two regular tubes with Slime in them already. But my one week of experience with sealant is not enough to render an informed decision on the best brands.

If you add sealant in the valve, be very careful to clean out the valve stem carefully so that the sealant does not gum up the valve seats.

Some pumps like the Lezyne Micro Floor Drive threads onto the valve core instead of a normal chuck that clamps on. If you have removable cores, they can stay in the chuck when you take the valve off. It is possible to tighten the core with a wrench, or a friend of mine uses blue (removable) threadlocker on the threads for replaceable valve cores. So, you can use that pump on those cores, just giving you a forewarning here that you need to do something to avoid the core coming out with the chuck.

Tourist in MSN

Someone several years ago on this forum commented that it could be very hard to find the itty bitty thing that caused the puncture inside of a tire. They would wipe the inside of the tire with a ball of cotton and often the cotton would snag on the sharp item like a thorn, making finding it much easier.

cyccommute 

Probably me. It’s an old trick around here.

I will say that while I’m not a fan of sealants, I have used them on some of my excursions to southeastern Colorado. After getting over 65 punctures when I taunted the Goathead Gods (there were many more but I just stopped counting), I started to use old tires (used from my local co-op), tire liners, and Slime tubes. At the risk of taunting the Goathead Gods again and all that entails, I haven’t picked up a single goathead over multiple trips to the goathead capital of North America. All that weight...and I implore the Goathead Gods to consider my sacrifice...is horrible but it seems to work.

Gaze upon the horror that is a couple of goathead plants.

DSCN1199 by Stuart Black, on Flickr
DSCN1200 by Stuart Black, on Flickr

Nearly all the green you see in the first picture is goathead plants. Each yellow spot you see in those plants will produce 5 seeds, each one a caltrop which has a better than 50% chance of sticking a thorn into the air to puncture a tire. Each plant can products hundreds to thousands of flowers.

robow

Unimaginable ! I can't fathom how many patches and tubes you must have carried/gone thru. I think I would have changed hobbies.
Wonder how Marathon Pluses would hold up to those things ?

cyccommute 

I walked the last mile and carried the last half mile after the tires fell off because they are were so flat.

On the previous ride...the one where I taunted the Goathead Gods, we had 27 punctures between 4 people. One of the punctures was on my wife’s bike which I had forgotten to put one tire liner in but the other 26 punctures were on the other two bikes. One rider got 20 and used every patch I had. She was down to riding about 1/4 of a mile, pumping up the tire (with my pump), and rinsing and repeating as needed. She used up all of my spare tubes as well. The other rider had tubeless and had to pump up every 1/2 mile.

The problem was that I did a “Neener! Neener!” dance when we got back to the trailhead and, for that, the Goathead Gods did smite me mightily!

staehpj1

One hint for those who do go tubeless in goat heat or even other thorn country... Be sure to use enough sealant. It may take more than the recommended amount and it needs to be replenished every so often If you live where there are lots of thorns the replenishing may need to be more frequent.

Tourist in MSN

Some friends of mine did Southern Tier. They did an indoor trip, no camping. Started in California, rode to Florida, rented a minivan and each day a different member of the group drove the van with their luggage and provided water stops while the others rode.

In the desert southwest, one of them had seven flats a day on average with his skinny tire road bike. That sounded horrendous to me, until I started reading some of the experience of others in this thread. Suddenly seven flats per day does not sound so bad. That said, I average one flat per year.

But one of that group had a total of four flats for the whole trip, he brought his Cannondale touring bike, had 35 or 37mm tires on it, I do not know what brand or model of tires, but they had better flat protection than the skinny road bike tires that some of the others used.

If you start considering sealant in tubeless, there was a thread on that topic recently on the randonneuring board.
https://www.bikeforums.net/long-dist...oad-tires.html

alo

I have been running tubeless sealant in my fat bike. The problem with it is, when you get a large puncture which the sealant wont seal, and need to patch it, a little sealant leaks out, and prevents the patch from sticking.

After thinking about it, I might get a puncture which the sealant will seal, on average once a month, and I might get a large puncture which the sealant wont seal, on average once a year. So I am back to running sealant in my tubes.

I am now going to motorbike tubes in my fat bicycle.

I am also using a different brand of sealant.

I shall see how it all goes.

cyccommute 

Having lived where the pestilence of goat heads has existed long before I got here...and I remember dinosaurs wandering the landscape...I have a bit of a sixth sense about goat heads. I know where they grow and where I’m likely to run into them. But like all psychic abilities, mine are more imagined than real and every tube I own has at least one patch from goat heads. More often they have 10 to 20. People from outside the area...i.e. most of the rest of the nation...tend not to know where to find them but the goatheads will find you. I’m not surprised by the number of flats that your group of people from out of the area got. Lots of people just ride off the road when they stop and right into a patch of them. People from around here tend to stop on the pavement and look before they go off into the dirt.

Lots of tires...even tubeless ones...have protection belts under the tread. They are effective...not perfect, but effective. Like I said above, I use plastic liners which are the same thing but reusable. Mine are at least 20 years old. I may have some that are 40 years old.

Just reading the first post in that thread may have cleared up a mystery that has bothered me for years. At my local co-op, we have buckets of relatively high end mountain bike tires with little to no wear on the tread. I always assumed that the people donating the tires went to another brand and dumped the old tires on us. yannisg says

That might explain why we have so damned many tubeless tires. Yet another reason why I’m just not interested.

BikeLite

Stuart cyccommute, what tire liner do you recommend?...found it...mr tuffy

cyccommute 

Any one but Slime. Tuffy’s have worked well for me for ages. Rhinodillos also work. Slime doesn’t taper the ends of their liners and they have been the only liner I’ve used that rubbed through my tube in just a few miles.

Lazyass

On my bikes with tubular wheels I carry a small 2oz bottle of Stan's. I had to use it one time. I removed the vale core, squirted in half the bottle, aired it up and whet on my way. It sealed so well I could go almost a week without having to add air. For clinchers I'd rather have tubes with removable cores than a tubeless setup.

Tourist in MSN

Just to clarify, do you mean you are using sealant in sewups?

Lazyass

Yes. They have tubes just like clinchers.

Tourist in MSN

Yes I know, I used them in the 80s. Still have two sets of wheels that I have not used for decades, should probably donate to charity.

There have been a few times on this forum where someone used the word tubular but meant tubeless, that is why I asked.

staehpj1

Glad you asked. I figured that is what was meant, but wondered the same as you did.

Lazyass

Sorry, just making sure haha. A lot of the new generation knows nothing about them.

BobG

Back in the 60s all I used for light hosteling type touring were tubular (sew up) tires. Clement "Elvezia" was the standard, cheap cotton, throw away model. By "throw away" I mean they only cost $3-$4 so if you had a flat you'd just buy a new one. The Clement "Campionato del Mondo" was a higher end silk model with a relatively wide cross section adequate for light touring. Those we'd usually snip the stitching, patch and re-sew. I wish we had sealant back then!

As the poster below, we'd always carry a spare tire or two and do the patching and sewing at home.

Nostalgic ad from American Cycling magazine, April 1966 ...



Yes, I'm a hoarder!

gkamieneski

I am using 40Ml of Continental Revo in my Sprinter sewups and tubed clincher wheelsets, mainly in the rear tires. I make sure I use replaceable presta core tubes with the clinchers, Continental tubes. I am reluctant to use in front wheels, but I probably just jinxed myself.

I don't want to carry sealant with me, instead I really don't mind carrying a folded sewup under the saddle and another in my middle pocket. If the sealant works as advertised, I may be able to go with just 1 sewup spare. Also, interested in learning what the shelf life will be for the Revo as well as how long it is viable in the tires.