Broctoon

Step one: Hop on your road bike for a fun 22 mile Monday evening ride. Take your little grandson along in a trailer, if you have one. He loves bike rides. Since it’s July, outside temp might still be 90 degrees at 8:00 PM, so be sure to take plenty of water.

Step two: Eleven miles in, drop off your grandson with his parents and start the trip back to home. After an initial fun, fast descent for about 2 miles, turn onto a busy boulevard and settle into a moderate 15 MPH cruise.

Step three: You might spot a sharp little pothole just barely too late to swerve around it. You can try to bunny hop it, but perhaps this is a skill you’ve never really mastered. Even if you’re usually good at bunny hopping, the trailer will make it difficult to lift the rear wheel. Clear the pothole with your front wheel, but smack it hard with the rear.

Step four: Listen to a terrible crashing sound as the rear tire compresses enough to instantly separate its bead from the rim, all the air pressure escapes in a fraction of a second, and most of the tubeless sealant gets out as well, making a bit of a mess.

Follow up: Spend 30 minutes on the side of the road trying to get the tire to re-inflate. If you have a little bottle of sealant, you can put it in the tire. You might try two CO2 bottles, plus use of a small pump, but no matter what you do the tire will never seal. The bead will have no trouble re-seating, but the tire will continue to leak (in spite of the sealant) and will not hold more than a few PSI. Make the call of shame for your wife to come and pick you up. Plan on looking at the wheel after work the next day to figure out what’s going on.

Your experience may vary, but that’s how I do it.

rsbob 

Bummer indeed. A fun ride gone woefully awry.

I have gone back to horrible pot holes and circled them with marking paint.

Maelochs

At least you get to spray your young passenger with sticky goo.

Outrider1

No thoughts about leaving the trailer at your kids' house when you dropped your grandson off?

Russ Roth

Always carry a tube, trying to seal a tubeless tire on the side of the road after getting a flat is just an exercise in frustration. Every bike in the family with a tubeless setup still has a tube in the seat bag. Puncture too big to seal, boot it and tube it, rim too dented to seal, tube will keep it seated, trying to get a new seal with limited air resources, tube is fast and easy. Reseating tubeless is best done with a real good floor pump, or even better, an air compressor, a tube can spare you the call of shame. Also can't say I ever tried bunny hopping with the trailer attached, and while I can do a decent bunny hop, I suspect I'd have looked silly trying and would have been standing next to you trying to fix the resulting mess.

Broctoon

No, because then they’d have both trailers… we have one we leave at their house for my daughter to use, and one we keep at our house for times when the grandson comes over. There was no necessity for me to take him home last night. He could have ridden with his mother in the car. But I wanted a ride, and he loves the trailer, so I took him.

Broctoon

You’re right, and if I’d had a tube with me last night, I’m sure I could have ridden home. I’ll probably carry one from now on.

Inspecting everything today, here’s what I found:

The rim is not damaged at all, which is a surprise, given how hard it was hit. That’s one tough rim!

The tire is probably shot. It has a small gash in the sidewall, near the bead. If it were closer to the tread area and I’d been able to locate it in the poor light last night, I probably would have tried a Stan’s Dart. I don’t think I want to try repairing damage in this location, even under good conditions, so I’ll replace that tire.

downtube42

Yeah I'm considering removing sealant from my long distance kit. The use case for sealant on the road is pretty slim. I mean, if something is bad enough to release all the sealant, I can just boot and tube it. From there, patches will get me where I'm going.

Plugs, boot, tubes, and patch kit will get me through nearly every tire situation.

CrimsonEclipse

At least you saved 15 grams by going tubeless!!!

CliffordK

My tubeless experiment stopped short the first ride with hitting a rock in Albany. On way home, but about 50 miles from home. Didn't seal. Tube and made it home.

Another ride with tubes. 150+ miles into ride. Just south of Portland. Dead tired. Cut around storm sewer grate and hit road crack at edge of grate. POW. Fixed and finished ride.

Another ride, heading north. Just north of Albany, blew 2" of bread separation from tire. Interesting booting to get me to the next bike shop 20 miles further down road.

Broctoon

Probably not. Tubeless tires are slightly heavier. Add a few ounces of sealant, and I've offset the weight of a tube. Anyway, I'd have gotten a pinch flat with a tube just as surely as I did without one.

What I save with tubeless is LOTS of flats from smaller, less catastrophic incidents, mainly goat head punctures. These used to cause me flats on about a weekly basis (sometimes every ride). Since I switched to tubeless, I've never had a goat head puncture that did not seal itself.

LarrySellerz

Sounds like you didn’t crash... so you won in my book.