Tubeless After Winter
 

I've searched but haven't quite found an answer. I have tubeless road tires on my Surly. I set it up in the late Spring. Now my bike will be sitting till the weather warms up again so it will be a few months. Should I just add sealant in the Spring and ride? Should I remove the tires and clean some of the old sealant out over the winter then redo in the spring? Not sure what people do that have to deal with cold winter months. I would imagine there is a limit to the number of times you want to just add sealant.

I wouldn't go beyond removing the majority of the sealant. If you don't have one already, get a syringe that can insert all of the way in to the tire, via the valve stem, so that you can easily add/remove sealant - https://www.amazon.com/Tubeless-Seal...dp/B07WR9MMDW/

If your valve stems have a constriction and won't let the "needle" pass all of the way through, get some machined aluminum valve stems (Muc-Off seem to be widely available) the next time you're at the LBS.

I generally don’t bother to do anything over the winter, and have found that there’s usually still liquid sealant after 5 months in the basement, so I just add a bit in spring and go.

The other thing is that rear tires only last a season or so, so new rubber goes on in early summer anyway, making futzing for winter less sensical.

Even my winter/spring roadie, which sees very little mileage and spends most of the year unridden, doesn’t get any special storage treatment, just an annual top off if needed (as determined by visual inspection using syringe method).

If you haven't added more sealant since the spring it is probably dried up by now anyway. How long it last varies great, Stan's for example says 2 - 6 months. This is my first winter with road bike setup tubeless and I plan to do nothing to the tires while it sits on the trainer. I'll put fresh sealant in it come spring. My mtn bikes keep being ridden.

I'll admit that I've been terribly deficient when it comes to maintaining my 4 sets of tubeless wheels/tires. I basically do nothing except pump them up and ride. Over the course of 4 seasons my wife and I have had zero flats. I chalk that up to the roads we ride and luck. For whatever reason it's working.

To prevent a dried blob of sealant sitting at the bottom of a tire, either keep rotating it occasionally or drain it. I've had a rear tire on a trainer go flat because the sealant dried up. I had to add more sealant. I actually try to ride outdoors whenever possible in the Colorado winter. We get snow, but my local roads are well maintained and the snow usually melts off quickly. I don't ride below 40 degrees either.

​

In my experience, if I leave a set of tubeless wheels to sit for months on end without being moved they will usually lose all air, and the sealant will collect at the low point of the tire and eventually start to dry up into a big glob. If this happens, I prefer to remove the glob, which means I'm pulling off the tire, cleaning up the rim and old sealant, and installing fresh.

I am able to avoid the glob by just moving the wheels around/spinning them every few weeks and keeping them aired up. If I were feeling proactive and knew that I'd be hanging up the bike (or wheels) for a few months without touching them, I'd probably pull the existing sealant out with a syringe first. I swap tires on my tubeless setups frequently enough that pulling a tire off to clean out dried sealant isn't really a big deal.

Why go tubeless in the first place?

check if there is any recommendations from the tires maker

The combination of tubeless on wider hookless rims is fantastic for a road bike. I have 23 and 25mm internal width hookless rims and use 52/56 psi with 30mm and 28mm tires. The ride is so much better. Flats are far less likely.
​​​

Just took my rain bike off the trainer and put wheels back on it. The Pirelli Cinturato Velos I have running tubeless still have liquid sealant in them because I never bothered to extract it. Inflated the tires and am waiting to see if the tires hold air overnight. Will probably refresh/top off sealant anyway but not too concerned about it.

I just yesterday pulled my winter roadie off the wall it’s hung on the past 5 months or so, and yeah, the American Classic Timekeepers are still holding liquid sealant too. I reinflated, washed and lubed the bike in prep for the season, and the wheels spin smoothly in the stand, without hops, so I don’t think I’ll even bother adding sealant unless I get slow leaks.

I did replace one of the valve stems to match the other, but am otherwise satisfied that she’s come out of summer storage just fine (with regard to sealant).

There is only one true way to know; inspect it visually. If it's dried up or the color has changed, replace it.

And yes, you can't really mix fresh and old sealant indefinitively. 1) The weight weenies here will crucify you! and 2) sealant won't be as efficient as it should at some point.

I unmount and clean my tires/rims before every winter (my bikes are stored) so I always start with a fresh setup when spring arrives. I don't inspect anything over the summer simply because I don't ride enough to worry about sealant drying up. I just add 1oz of sealant in each wheel halfway through the season.

I've been using muc-off for the last 2 years and it's still looking good after 6ish months of usage when I remove my tires.

Your tire will wear out long before dried up sealant becomes a problem. After many years of running tubeless the only time I clean out a tire is when I have to pull it off for some other reason even then I don't do a good job at it.

I removed about 1 oz from each tire. Sealant looked like it did when it went in. Should I just add 1oz at the beginning of riding season or a full 2oz to each tire? I was surprised the tires unseated when I let the air out to syringe the sealant out. I guess that's normal, but my head was telling me they should be all sealed up.

Yes. That is all you need to do. More than likely it will dry up some. My mountain bike use has stopped now that winter is here and I won't touch it until sometime in April. At that point I will add 2-3 ounces of sealant.

I wouldn't. It's a PIA and there is no benefit to doing so. Just do that when you wear the current tires out and have to put on a new tires on.