indyfabz

I have been running tubeless rims and tires on my road bike for years.

As to the first point: Sealant is water soluble. I suffered a puncture that would not stay sealed above 60 psi. My ex-GF did as well. I put tubes in both times. Any you get on you cleans up easily.

As to the second point, I think you are correct based on my experiences with punctures of skinny, high pressure tires that would not stay sealed above 60 psi.

fantom1 

Of course one wouldn't use racing tires for touring. In the past and even currently, for 700 tires, there aren't many dedicated tubeless options in larger sizes.

The first thing he says in the video is that they didn't catch on because they are/were a pain in the butt.

My specific problems were:

1) Getting them on or off the rim

2)Seating them without using an expensive can of compressed air/sealant. Even then, they didn't seat many times.
2A) Sealant exploding everywhere and staining nearly everything.

3)Punctures that would not seal and instead just sprayed a fine mist of sealant everywhere, staining my kit and getting all over the bike, only to dry into a difficult to clean mess. (Better my kit than the wool jerseys I normally tour in though.)

4)After #3 with a flat, getting them off the rim, putting in a tube and getting them back on again. Difficult at home, but on the road even moreso.

5) More punctures (that did heal) but eventually led to a heavier tire that eventually would not hold air as well (this is still an issue- the tire might get you home, but each puncture is weakening the tire. Which is a much lesser effect with tubes.) All those "fills" of sealant will likely re-open, or at least they did in my experience. This was especially true riding in the rain, to the point where I wouldn't use them if it was wet. Maybe the formulations have changed significantly?

6) The cost. See #5, but the tire life was significantly less, coupled with buying sealant and lots of CO2 cartridges/air.

So for touring, where ride quality, rolling resistance, and cornering ability (the real advantages of tubeless after all) are nil, IMO its worthless to go tubeless. I think people are missing the forest for the trees here and only thinking that tubeless is about punctures. The real benefits of tubeless be it mountain or road having nothing to do with punctures or not- sealant works just as well with tubes.

I only see negatives and no positives. Like I said, Schwalbe and maybe others already have touring tires that, knock on wood, are nearly indestructible and except for the price, nearly perfect with none of the headaches of tubeless.


IME, the sealant stained nearly everything. I still have yellowish stains on things from it.

No standardization is just one more reason to stay away from it on a touring where you don't know when you might need what. And IME, putting in a tube was exponentially more difficult with tubeless than a normal tire. See above, but for touring the benefits aren't worth the headaches (to me).

b_young

Ok so I was looking at one of the pictures in the link that had a close up of the tire/rim. It says TUBELESS on it. So it probably is only tubeless ready and doesn't come tubeless.

b_young

I will give it a try running at lower pressure. I have commuted for years and run Specialized Armadillo tires 700x28 I normally inflate to 110psi. It "feels" faster on the 10 mile commute but never really tried lowering and comparing. I wouldn't over inflate with a loaded bike on a long tour. It doesn't sound like it would end well. But I normally get between 1500 and 2000 miles per tire. My LBS kept the last set because I had no rubber and only Kevlar down the center without it flatting.

Rob_E

This may be true. I have not shopped for 700c, tubeless tires. But in this discussion, the OP believes their bike will come with tubeless tires. That's the reason for this post, so I think we have to assume that the OP does have a tire available, otherwise there is literally nothing to discuss. In a pro/con list, you could simply say: there are no tires.

"pain in the butt" is hardly a specific complaint (unless we're talking about saddles). He is specifically talking about road tires. He goes on to talk about how wonderful these tubeless tires are, and never mentions which butt pains are alleviated by this particular set of tires. So it's good that you mention your specific complaints.

Of course since it seems like your experience is with tubeless racing tires, and because we both agree that you wouldn't want to tour on racing tires, it's hard to know what's a tubeless tire issue, a tubeless road tire issue, or a specific rim/tire combo issue. All I can do is look at your specific problems in relation to my own experiences, which involved very different tires and rims than yours.

I did have to lever the tires on to the rim. First get one side in, position it in the center of the rim, move the bead of the other side of the rim over by hand until it was too tight to move by hand, then get the tire lever. This was a bit of a pain. It was, however, the exact process I used to mount my non-tubless tires. So for me, it's not a tubeless issue, just a some-tires-are-tight issue.

I have only seated 4 tires, but I will say that two of those tires seated wonderfully well with a floor pump. The other two did not seat until I put a tube in. Once they were seated with the tube, they reseated easily with the floor pump once the tube was removed. Either I am lucky, or you are unlucky in this regard.

I didn't experience this at all. I moved Operation Tubeless outside to the deck, just in case, but I don't think a drop of sealant got on the deck. Some got on the table because I knocked the bottle over.

I haven't experienced this yet, thank goodness. I do seem to have pretty good luck with flats, though. They used to be a consistent issue, but now they are a rarity. So much so that it's difficult to tell whether the sealant is saving me from flats or just my normal luck in that regard. I don't see any sealant peeking through my tires, so I may just not have a puncture yet. But also, when you talk about sealant spraying, and when I look at the video you posted, I do see some jets of sealant that seem to be related to the pressure of the tire. It is hard for me to imagine my lower pressure tires shooting out sealant like that. It may be an issue that is more prevalent in high pressure, road tires.

Another thing I have been happy to not experience. I did have to go the other direction: remove a tube from the tire, install a valve stem, and reinflate. I didn't find that terribly difficult, though, as I could do the whole thing without removing the tire from the rim.

No clue about this. I would say though, that, when it comes to touring, I don't care much about the weight of my tires. I used to run Marathon Plusses, and found them heavy and stiff enough to be unpleasant for normal commuting, so I'd leave them in closet and only put them on the bike when it was time to tour. I'd accept a weight penalty in exchange for fixing a flat by the side of the road. Of course if the fix does not hold, then you've only postponed your tire repair session. But then this is the first time I've heard someone complain that the tire sealed only temporarily. Usually I hear either that it failed to seal, or it successfully sealed and never troubled them again. Maybe it's only fair weather bikers.

This, I definitely haven't seen because I didn't need CO2 to air up my tires or to seat my beads. And I've accepted the fact that if the sealant failed to stop a leak, the solution would not be compressed air, but would be a tube. If I have to retire tires just because they won't seal, I will probably just switch back to tubes until I have worn those tires out, just to get my money's worth.

Many people cite puncture protection (or, rather, puncture recovery) as a major benefit of tubeless. You are literally the first person I have seen claim that sealing punctures is of no consideration at all. I could be wrong, but I think maybe your negative experiences with your high pressure road tires have tainted your views. Or else the entirety of the mountain bike world is living in denial. Meanwhile, my experience with sealant-filled tubes is that they are hit or miss when it comes puncture protection. I have already seen my tubeless sealant address leaks at the valve and at the rim, the very places my sealant tubes were known to fail. And, while I say I will take a weight penalty and a less forgiving ride to prevent flats on a tour, it doesn't mean that I can't tell the differences in ride quality. My Marathon Plusses were more tolerable as part of a loaded tour, but still not as pleasant as the more supple tires I eventually switched to. Likewise my Almotion tires are kind of stiff, and remind me of my Marathons, but I like them better because I can run them tubeless, which makes them roll a little better than my old Marathons. I would agree that ride quality/weight/rolling resistance are less of an issue when you're loaded with gear, but I wouldn't consider them non-issues. And I would expect that the extent to which the ride quality was noticeable might relate to the weight of your gear. There's a wide spectrum of how much weight people are willing to carry, so I wouldn't be comfortable saying that no one will notice rolling resistance or ride quality just because they are touring.

Well, you've certainly made your case. And you certainly should not tour tubeless. Happily some of the issues you cite run contrary to my experience, and some of the issues I simply lack the experience to know about. Hopefully I will find my experiences running contrary to yours in those cases, as well. Otherwise it will be back to tubes for me as well. But so far, I'm enjoying my tubeless tires when commuting, touring, or wandering around the bike trails for the hell of it.

Rob_E

If we're looking at the same photo and the same bike, the "Tubeless" appears on the rim. That would match with the bike's description which mentions that the rim is tubeless-compatible, but the tires that it mentions are not (afaik), so your bike will likely not arrive set up tubeless, and if you wanted to set it up that way, it would be worth considering getting some true, tubeless tires. Once you have some tires in mind, you may be able to get some specific advice regarding that tire/rim combination being run tubeless.

fantom1 

Likewise

Maybe we are just talking apples to oranges. A 700x25mm road tire is closer to the 700x35-38mm touring tires I use than the touring tires are to mtn bike tires. Plus I am 180lbs at my absolute skinniest and closer to 195 at a fit riding weight, so if you are 130lbs we are also talking apples to oranges. I don't think it makes much of a difference in touring though.

One point of yours I still don't get, is that puncture resistance is totally ancillary. Nobody rides tubeless purely for punctures, that doesn't make any sense since again, you can put sealant in tubes with the exact same function. The difference is in ride quality and for mtn bikes this is amplified (ime) because of the loose dirt, rocks, etc. People were putting sealant into tubes long before tubeless. It just happened that glued road tires give a much better ride, so people started experimenting with tubeless as an easier option to stitched tires (since those are the ultimate PITA haha).

Regardless, have fun on the tubeless, I'll have fun on them for mtn biking, and stick to tubes for touring...at least for the time being. I'd be curious to know your opinion after a few more sets of tires and rims.

J.Higgins 

This is pretty much exactly my perspective as well. I'm a huge fan of Schwalbe Marathon plus tires, and I really do not give a rodent's posterior if they are heavy or not. They roll nice. They are precise. They are very flat-resistant. Therefore in a 95% road-touring setup, I would use tubes.

On the other hand, my ECR runs tubeless and I use Orange Seal inside the Chupacabras. I carry extra sealant with me, superglue, a Park tire boot, a curved needle and some kevlar fishing braid, and some gorilla tape. This is for a sidewall repair. Pretty much any thorns or small nails are taken care of my the sealant anyway.

linus

I don't tour in North America anymore. I travel to Asia a lot and when I come back, Canadian or U.S airport securities open my case and leave it open because they couldn't put stuff back properly.

I like light bikes and lighter equipment however, tubeless tires are not lighter. Usually if there are tubeless and non-tubeless version of tires, non-tubeless version is lighter because they don't need rubber coating inside. Also the reason I don't use tubeless is because I like Panaracer tires and their case feel amazing with supple tubes. If Panaracer makes their supple casing tires tubeless, I'll definitely go for it.

staehpj1

As has been mentioned already tire volume and tire pressure may make tubeless more or less suitable for your use.

I have not toured on tubeless, but have been running tubeless on my MTB for some time now. I went from a leak once or twice a week to no flats in quite a few months. The flats I suffered before going tubeless were all from thorns.

Most of the disadvantage I read about never really materialized. I had no trouble getting the beads to seat even with a hand pump. I also barely ever spilled a drop of sealant or got it on my hands, but when cleaning up the hose and syringe it was obvious that the stuff just rinsed off easily with water.

So far I have only needed to install the tires and then subsequently dismount one to replace a spoke nipple that had a stub of spoke broken off in it, but both operations were zero mess.

All that was with Stans No Tubes wheels and tires. Not sure if other rim/tire combinations are similarly easy to deal with or not but mine have been zero fuss, much less trouble than the previous tube setup I was using.

I wouldn't hesitate to tour on tubeless if there is a suitable tire/rim combo for the size and pressure I want to run. If I were to tour on the higher volume tires that a lot of folks prefer it would be a slam dunk. Since I have been touring ultralight and with 25mm tires I don't know if it is a good option for my paved road touring.

Squeezebox

anything specific about the tires? My rims say tubeless ready, but the tires that came with the bicycle or the current tires, neither say anything about tubeless ready. I'll assume the came with tires are tubeless ready. But what about the current tires? Are all tires in fact tubeless ready? I guess it's youtube time.

niknak

Ask the tourists who ride the Great Divide through New Mexico or Baja Divide or any place with lots of thorns and they'll tell you running tubeless is the best option for puncture resistance. Putting sealant in tubes isn't as effective as a proper tubeless setup.

balrog687

I'm traveling with a Belgium girl. She's using 27+ tubeless rims and tires.. no flats or any issue in 3 months and a half.. from Alaska to Yellowstone..

I already have like 4 flats using tubes and regular mtb tires (Maxxis ardent)

Rob_E

I disagree on a couple of points. 1) I have found sealant in a tube to have a fairly low success rate. Maybe 50/50. I can't compare this directly to tubeless, because I have only had one flat with my tubeless tire, caused by lack of sealant, rather than the sealant being ineffective, and adding sealant fixed it. The reported success of tubeless sounds better to me than what I've experienced with tubes, but time will tell. 2) I make no claims about puncture protection being the sole or primary reason to go tubeless, only that it is often stated as a real and significant benefit of tubeless. Alongside other qualities like weight and ride quality. Simply adding a sealant filled tube, even if it supplied the same amount of puncture protection, would have a negative impact on tire weight and possibly overall ride quality.

So it makes sense to me that even if the only benefit you were looking for was flat protection, tubeless still might be a preferred way to go, if just to obviate the weight that would be added by using sealant + a tube. But I'm not making the claim that people do go tubeless solely for flat protection. I don't know what other people's motivations are. I am simply saying that when asked about benefits, puncture protection is frequently cited as a huge benefit. Not necessarily the sole reason to go tubeless, but a definite, significant benefit.

We will see. I know have a commuting/touring rim/tire combo and a plus-sized off-road tire/rim combo. I have it in the back of my head to build a couple more wheels, but they are low priority. And they will be some weird sizes, so tubeless-compatible parts may be an issue.

fantom1 

Who are these tourists you are talking about? Besides, I already talked about the difference between mtn bike tires and road/road touring tires. Apples to oranges. Anyhow, I spent most of my life in the Southwest and don't need to ask any "tourists."

Women almost always have far fewer flats than men just due to body weight. An extra 50lbs does a lot to adding flats. Anyhow, if you're using mtb tires and pressures and bike weights, just go tubeless if you want. Tubeless works much better at 40psi than 120psi.

Depends largely on the tube/sealant combo. Latex tubes with Orange sealant and also the Bontrager sealant work nearly 100% of the time. Slime also works well, but yes, standard latex sealant doesn't work well in tubes. Then again, some sealants don't work well in tubeless. Horses for courses.

Anyhow, here are a few interesting tests:

https://mbaction.com/home-page/tire-sealant-shootout

Sealant Test - Part 2 - Slowtwitch.com

Leebo

I tour on my mt bike, tubeless work great. Plug kit and some super glue could be useful too.

chrisx

I am one of them. I logged thousands of miles on my mt bike, in Baja over the last 10 years.
With WTB 2.55 Weirwolf tires on the back roads of Sierra de la Giganta
With tubes, 4 flats a day, over 500 miles.
With stans tubeless, 0 flats per 500 mile trip.

I like orange Seal better.

Stan's fluid once ruined my $80 wool shirt when the bottle leaked on it.

Marcus_Ti

Yea, my fortune with high-volume MTB tires and tubeless is very high. Lower pressure simply make sealing a very high chance short of utterly slashing a tire. A puncture also doesn't spray as much sealant or lose as much air.

My LBS refers to roadie tubeless as the "sucky kind of tubeless"...high pressures mean the odds of sealing a puncture aren't great, nvm the higher mess and pressure loss.

chrisx

Does the airport security care about liquid inside the tires? They open my case 1 out of 5 times? I seldom fly while set up tubeless.

linus

Bikes are checked-in baggage. So probably no.

Squeezebox

The people that want to deny advances in bicycle technology amaze me. The facts are right in front of you about the benefits of tubeless. If you think it's too much trouble considering how you ride or where you live, So be it.
But the benefits are real and right there in front of you. They cannot be Trumped.

Any advice of a 700 x 35 tubeless ready tire?

chrisx

https://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/road_tires
plenty more out there.

note to self
buy this one
Schwalbe G-ONE Speed
https://www.universalcycles.com/shop...s.php?id=89189

fantom1 

Why did you capitalize "Trumped"? The detriments are also right in front of you. The people who want to deny the lack of sufficient technological development amaze me.

indyfabz

+1. As I noted above, I ride road tubeless and can attest to the problems with getting a puncture to stay sealed at high pressure. The last time I punctured (last year) I was unaware of it until the next day when I noticed orange spatters on my frame. The tire would not hold more than 60 lbs. Based on my experience with other punctures, that seems to be the tipping point.


P.S. He's simply following his typical M.O. Best to just ignore him.

J.Higgins 

I've seen some folks testing glitter mixed into their sealant. Might be worth a try?