Tubeless on road bikes??
 

I have a Canyon Ultimate and I'm considering going tubeless. I have all the tools required and some stans on hand (for my mountain bike). MY rims (DT Swiss P 1800 Spline db) are tubeless ready as are my tires (Continental 5000s). I just need to buy the Stans tubeless stems.

I'm tired of fixing flats. Today I was going to go for a ride, all kitted out. And my front tire has a puncture. And my spare has a pinhole leak. And by luck I'm out of patches.

What are the disadvantages of tubeless on a road bike?

Stan's has mixed reviews at road bike tire pressures, to put it kindly. I recommend using something with clogging particulate, like Orange Seal.

If you're primarily subject to smaller punctures, tubeless will probably be great for you. If you regularly get large gashes, tubeless isn't going to help with that, and it'll be a more messy roadside fix.

Main drawbacks of tubeless would be the learning curve in getting them mounted and seated. The newest rims and tires will often pop on with some swift strokes of a decent floor pump. Some rim/tire combinations will require a blast from an air compressor; lubricating the beads can help in either instance.

Lots of threads here that have thrashed this out to death.

Bottom line is it's a viable option, but a personal decision. Certainly can cut down on flats but increases the hassle/faff factor with setup and sealant maintenance.

Your choice.

bead seating can be an issue. Sealant choice for the purpose & conditions should be looked into. Adding a plug kit along with the patches are recommended.
Upfront cost can shy folks away, but that usually if a whole new wheel set is needed to support the change.

my personal take on the amount of sealant; use more than the recommended min/average amount.

I'd use Orange Seal first and Stan's second but Stan's works okay. I jsyt think Orange Seal regular works better on road bikes. Tubeless- no point going tubeless if you're running traditional high PSI like 80-100. The pressure is too high and sealant does not seal well at such high pressure. Plus, you are losing all the benefit of lower PSI like better traction and comfort.

You will have to refresh the sealant every 2-3 months. You will have to carry a sealing kit and/or a light tube. I have been road tubeless since last year though I did try it a few years ago. I have had no issues and far prefer the ride of 30/32 tires at 55-63 PSI (I'm 175 lbs and rims are 25mm wide internal) that my 25s and 28s at 75-90 PSI. Speed is no different. I would not ride tube-type wheels again unless on just one ride as a backup bike.

I've been running tubeless Contis on my road bike for the past 3 years with MucOff sealant. It's worked extremely well for me, and I've had no problem seating the beads on my rims (HED Belgium+ alloy).

EDIT: But yeah, there are already a bunch of threads about this. Do a search.

Since you mentioned that your current tires are tubeless ready, and that they have had multiple flats in the past, I want to caution you that old stretched out tires with holes in them are even harder to set up than new tires. As a matter of fact, I gave up and bought a new set of tires after making several attempts.

Just as a routine matter, always have more than one spare tube on hand. Tough reason to miss a ride. Better yet, another set of wheels, cassette and tires. :thumb: I won't comment on tubeless. I won't go that way because in our garage we have 4 road bikes and I don't want to remember and perform the periodic refreshing of the sealant. Plus we're happy with how the tubed tires work and have very, very few flats. No reason other than that.

Not my bag

I'm still not 100% sold on road tubeless, even though I do run tubeless on one of my road bikes. For lower-pressure wider tyre applications (eg: gravel and offroad) it's great.

On the road, get the widest tyres you can so you can run lower pressure, 28-30mm. If you're a "23mm and 100psi" kind of guy, forget about it.

I've been using tubeless tires on my road bike for a couple of years. The only issues I've had were sidewall slashes that would have wrecked a tubed tire just as badly. While there was definitely a learning curve to working with the tubeless system, it's not really a big deal. Even though my road bike is limited to <28mm tires due to clearance under the rear brake, I'm pretty happy with the feel of 25-26mm tires at 75-80psi compared with 23mm at 100+.

I've switched to tubeless tires on most of my bikes and my wife's, for the same reason as the OP. I got tired of fixing little punctures. I've found some combinations of tire and rim are kind of a hassle to set up, but the benefit is totally worth it. Just this morning, I went to check out the bikes and make sure they were ready for a ride my wife and I had planned. Her front tire had two goat heads in it from her last ride. I pulled out one, and there was no leaking. It was too small to puncture all the way through. Pulled out the other, and it immediately began to leak. Rats! Hold on, though... give the wheel a spin, wait a few seconds, and check again. Fixed! Our ride was not delayed.

I put a little bit less pressure in my tubeless tires than I would in the same size with a tube.

I've had very good luck with Orange Seal. Stan's original formula seems to work okay too. I tried some Stan's Race and did not like it. It has a really coarse grit in it, like sand. The Orange Seal just has little flecks, almost looks like glitter.

Converted all of our bikes to tubeless without regret. That said I gave up 23mm 120 psi years ago and never looked back.

Even my long distance adventure touring bike converted 3 years ago with no issues.

The best part of running tubeless is you can run a high performance supple tire and get the puncture resistance of a garden hose gaterskin or marathon tire.

It sounds like you have experience with tubeless mtb. In which case I would just go right ahead. I run my Canyon Endurace on tubeless 30 mm GP5000S TR tyres at 60-65 psi and haven’t had a single flat in 18 months and two sets of tyres. I use Muc-Off sealant. Stans is a bit too thin for my liking. I also carry a Dynaplug Racer kit for plugging large holes.

Dynaplugs. Bacon strips are fine for the low pressure mtn bikes but I carry dynaplugs for the road bike. Seen several post about the bacon strips blowing out at higher pressures.

Dynaplugs I have been carrying for year for the MTB and gravel but need to for the road bike now...the road ones are smaller but may be the same as the gravel ones I have. I'd only run tubeless if running 28s minimum. The fatter the better since the PSI is lower and sealant works better at lower PSI. I think 55-65 is the max. That's the PSI I run 30/32 tires on. I don't use skinnier tires but if I ran 25s for example, I would just use tubes.

I love tubeless on my gravel bike and 100% recommend it for wider/lower pressure tires. For road I've had bad experiences with tubeless, with side cuts that wouldn't seal and even blowing up a carbon wheel trying to bead a tubeless tire. Since then I've been leaning towards using sturdier clincher road tires paired with lightweight TPU tubes + using glueless patches in case of punctures. Still not impervious, but I can pack several lightweight TPU tubes in my saddles and glueless patches with barely any weight penalty and repairs can be done quickly.

Though depending on your situation and road conditions, road tubeless might be a better solution.

I wouldn't do it with anything less than a 28c tire

Pros: softer more complaint ride, no pinch flats, puncture protection to a certain degree, good rolling resistance
Cons: Finicky messy setup, replacing sealant every 3-4 months, more expensive, when you do puncture and can't get it to seal it's messy and you will need to carry around a repair kit.

IMO if you are riding at least a 28c on a 21mm internal or greater and want something that is better on broken pavement or light gravel, and you don't have to worry as much about flatting than yeah tubeless can be great however I still have to carry a repair kit and even a spare TPU tube for my tubeless setup bike. Put it this way, when tubeless works it's awesome and you can't imagine a better system but when you can't get a puncture to seal, or a tire to hold air, or a tire to seat right and you have sealant everywhere it's terrible and costly

I wouldn’t have gone road tubeless had my ‘22 Domane SL5 not come already set up with them. But, the performance over the last ~18 months has been great with only a minimum of maintenance.

It helps that my Domane runs on 32mm tires at 60psi. I’ve found some sealant (Stan’s) on my frame a few times but never noticed those punctures while riding.

I did get one puncture that required a “bacon strip” patch; but I got a couple hundred more miles on it.

Then, this weekend, I hit something that rIpped three closely spaced holes right down to the cords. The sealant did stop the air loss enough to get home but continued leaking in the basement.

I replaced the Bontrager R3 tire with the same type and had minimal problems mounting it and setting the bead with my floor pump. I also have a “down the valve” sealant injector to minimize mess.

Tubeless makes sense for you, especially if you can't leave the house without there already being 2 flats.

I bought a 2022 Checkpoint last year. The specs said tubeless ready. I assumed that the bike came with tubes, but I discover later in the summer that the wheels were set up tubeless, so I decided to stick with the tubeless. After some hassling around letting the air out and re-inflating just to see what happened, and with adding some Orange Sealant at the end of the season, I feel I know what needs to be done and how to do it. I haven't had any flats yet. But then again, on my 2019 Domane I run Conti 4000 four season tires with tubes and I haven't had any flats with those tires for four years. The tubeless are really no hassle at all. Replenishing the sealant at the end of the summer takes just a few minutes and is easy. I do carry spare tube just in case, but I'm careful how I ride and I never in forty-five years of riding have gotten a slash or big cut in any tire I rode, and this includes mtn bike tires as well. I don't expect to get any flats.

Why?

Having gone tubeless a few years ago, I can see why some people don't like it... although I'm totally sold on it. I had tire punctures two weekends in a row last month on very long rides and I didn't have to do anything to fix the punctures other than make sure the thing that made the puncture (a staple in one case) wasn't still in the tire.

The one disadvantage of going tubeless is the learning curve. I just recently learned that you periodically have to check your tires to make sure the sealant is still "fresh" in the tires. I.e., I pulled off one of my tires expecting to find a pool of white tire sealant and all I found was a watery substance and most of the sealant's rubbery goop had dried onto the inside of the tire. Had I flatted I gotten a puncture, it's unlikely the hole would've been sealed.

The second disadvantage of going tubeless is that it sure can be messy. If I ever had a flat on the road that the tubeless setup couldn't fix, I'd call for a ride home rather than deal with mess of putting in a tube on a wheel that is full of gooey, sticky sealant.

All in all, going tubeless requires more maintenance while you're at home to ensure your tires ready for the next ride and if you do that, your tires should save you from having to do maintenance on the side of the road (for most punctures) which you'd have to do with a tube.

I purchased one as well for putting sealant in and taking it out*. However, the latter proved to be problematic as the sealant in the tire occasionally forms little balls of rubber in the tire that like to clog the syringe hose. :( I have since resorted to breaking the bead on the tire and either pouring the sealant in or dumping it out that way, avoiding the need for a syringe / injector at all.

* I remove the sealant from my wheel sets in the Fall as the wheels just sit for months on end during the Winter or remain stationary on my smart trainer and I don't want the sealant to dry into a pool in one spot in the wheels. I guess this is another disadvantage of going tubeless... you don't have to remove the tubes on wheelsets that see little or no use.

4 years on 3 road bikes and zero flats.