chaadster

I just scored a pair of Schwalbe’s new Aerothan innertubes from Bike24.de in Germany, and thought I’d share a few pics and details on these very trick tubes which Schwalbe say are also excellent performers. I’ve not ridden nor even inflated these yet, so this is not a review or commentary on performance, just an overview of the product which I thought might be interesting to some since these tubes are hard to come by here in the USA, despite having been released by Schwalbe a few months ago.

The Aerothans I got are called Endurance Race 700c, the box indicating 28-622 through 35-622. Removing them from the box, I was delighted by their compact size and superlight weight. I got them to run as seat bag emergency spares for tubeless tires— call me old fashioned!— so compactness and lightweight were the priority. I looked at Tubolito as well, of course, but heard those get deformed by inflation and don’t return to original size and shape when deflated, while Aerothan are supposed to be better. I don’t know either way yet, but that’s how I made the call.

As you can see in the attached pics, these 28-35mm tubes are light: 52g! I weighed the closest sized butyl tube I have, a Specialized 700x20-28, so slightly smaller, at 113g. I can only assume a Specialized butyl to fit a 35c tire would weigh even more, so Aerothan mission accomplished on that front. You can also see the Aerothan is substantially smaller than that tube; again, a 35c butyl would be larger yet, so at this point, I’m totally stoked on Aerothan.

The big downside is that they’re expensive AF right now, like $30 apiece. It’s new tech for Schwalbe, and I guess they had to build an entirely new manufacturing facility at their headquarters in Germany for them, so I get the costs are high right now, but man, if these aren’t multi-use for whatever reason, I’ll be pretty disappointed!

It’s a lot to pay for spare tube space and weight savings, but it’s nice having a normal (i.e. 700x23) sized emergency kit on a bike with big 35c rubber. The real value, though, would be in running these regularly, because the anti-flat performance sounds excellent.

I guess that’s about it, and hopefully I never have another flat, never need to use an Aerothan, and so will never have the opportunity to report back here with usage news! Haha!

gravelschlub

I was thinking about picking up a tubolito for my spare tube, just so it better fits into my saddle pack - thanks for showing me another option.

Pop N Wood

Get a spool of shrink wrap and wrap it around the tube. Not only compresses the volume of the tube, it makes it slick and much easier to get in and out of a tool bag.

Should even work on your designer tubes.

Troul 

link to said spool?

Pop N Wood

Dude, there is a keyboard at your finger tips

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Blue-Hawk-5...-Wrap/50192327

Works great for moving things as well.

Troul 

I had a way different image than what you linked to.

chaadster

Fun idea! Can you get a 35c tube and do that, so we can compare the dimensions to the Aerothan? Of course, wrapping the tube doesn’t do anything to reduce the weight, but I’m willing to measure the Aerothan’s pack dimensions if you’ll post up what you squeeze a regular 35c tube down to.

Sy Reene

FWIW, my tubes that cover this size measure ~70mm diameter and 30mm thick.