Originally Posted by
The_woo
Dynaplugs aren't sold locally to me, promoted or given out to new owners of bikes that come tubeless from the factory. Despite them apparently being the only way to fix a decent sized puncture in a tubeless road tyre.
Giant stores in the UK have started delivering bikes with tubeless already setup. But they don't teach the customer how it works, give them any spare sealant, plugs, boots etc.
That combined with their factory tyres being **** (and I assume they use some **** Giant brand sealant) means that the club I ride with has had 100% of punctures in the last 3 months be tubeless users.
None of them fixed themselves, none of the riders had plugs, boot, gloves, extra sealant etc. Each one was a mess for someone to fix with a new tube and took an age.
This is especially annoying for our club as we have lots of women riders who've bought Liv bikes (giant sub brand for women), and being unable to just fix a flat on their new setups without help did not go down well.
No tube users have had a puncture in that time - though of course this is likely due to better tyres & luck.
I generally get less than 1 puncture a year riding GP5000 and similar road tyres and can't see myself ever considering tubeless unless forced onto it by a new bike with hookless rims.
Yeah, my Defy came setup tubeless. They actually come from the factory without any sealant. Your LBS adds the sealant (which is Stan's I believe) when the bike is sold. Now Stan's doesn't have a good reputation among road tubeless users because apparently it doesn't work well at higher road pressures. The Giant Gavia tyres that came on my bike actually went the distance on crappy UK roads full of debris. Not a single flat all last year on them. Sample of one I know. I have since replaced them with Pirellis and had 1 flat that required a plug to seal properly. That's a total of 15,000 kms on 3 sets of tubeless tyres without any real issues.
As for your club riders being totally ignorant of dealing with tubeless setups. Well that's not really any different to buying a bike with tubed tyres. I've never had a shop discuss anything with me about repairing flats on any type of tyre. Dynaplug is a US brand, but you can get them next day from Amazon uk and many uk shops. There are also countless other tubeless repair kits available. I just prefer Dynaplugs as they are the quickest and easiest to use. I've used other plug kits in the past and they work fine too.
Since we are sharing personal anecdotes here, I've done half a dozen century sportives this year and on each and every one of them I saw many people fixing flats by the roadside. Wheel off, tube in hand. While it may not be a big deal changing a tube, it's just something I never have to do any more. Thinking about it, it's now coming up to 20 years since I last had to remove a wheel from my bike out on the road or trail. In that same time period, I've had to plug tubeless tyres maybe a dozen times at the most and that was mainly UST tyres without sealant. But I've only been running road tubeless for 2 years, so early days yet! I've had one flat that required plugging (it was a big hole) and one that self-sealed, but lost a fair bit of pressure. Plugged that one after I got home.