daihard 

This is a timly thread for me. I have been happy with the Continental GP 4-Seasons for several years. One big reason I stayed with them was because Conti had no tubeless equivalent... until now. I've just converted to the GP 5000 AS (all-season) TRs. I took a quick spin around the hood to get the feel of the new tires, and I can already feel the smoothness. I am excited!

urbanknight

I had a really rough start with tubeless but I haven't given up yet. I seem to have a heck of a time setting them up, but once I do they are a dream with ride quality and the fact that they usually seal before I even lose a noticeable amount of air. I have decided not to bother cleaning out old sealant anymore. What's a few extra grams when the motor is carrying around a few extra kilograms?

ok, but how about running lower pressure without the risk of pinch flats? Or the fact that most punctures seal up before you even realize you got one?

jaxgtr

I've been happy with my tubeless experience, see no reason to return to tubes. Funny thing, I took my truck in for a recall inspection and took one of my bikes that I do still have tubes in to get home. I was pulling into the dealership, when I realized that I forgot to put my seat bag on the bike after I replaced the saddle with a new one. I was nervous about the ride home as I did not have anything on me if I got a flat. Would not even been a worry if I was running tubeless on this bike, however, I got home no issues.

I use Orange Seal and I don't get a bunch of gunk in my tires. There is a light film, but I do not stress about it. I just make sure the bead and wheel are pretty clean if I am remounting a tire.

alcjphil

OK, here is the thing about tubeless. Pinch flats rarely happen unless the rim is so badly damaged that it will probably have to be replaced and even then the damage may not result in a flat. Some years ago I was riding with a fast group, we were doing about 60 kph when I hit a pothole, the worst kind. The uphill side of the pothole sloped gently down to a big hit on the downhill side. I managed to save the front wheel, but the back wheel hit hard enough to eject my water bottle and result in a noise that had my friends certain that I had broken my frame. I lost no air from my tire but I later had to replace my rim. I was riding about the same air pressure than I would have with a tube type tire of the same size. A tube type tire would certainly have suffered a pinch flat. I was able to just keep riding on

Russ Roth

Agreed, don't understand what there is to clean out. I've got a plastic syringe that I use to fill the tire cleanly, no muss no fuss.

Don't know if its a weight issue but I've struggled on my own mtb to run tubeless, always seemed to burp the tires even at 35psi, currently run 30psi with a tube, but my wife has loved running tubeless and has no trouble with it. Just have to remember to inject some liquid ever 5-6 months. She's yet to have a flat while I've had two in the last 3 years, but the kids haven't had any flats so who knows.
I'll be setting up my gravel bike tubeless this summer, wife's is already set up as well, but I still haven't found the desire to switch anyone's road bikes to tubeless. Although a couple could go that way for my daughter's race bike I set it up with latex tubes and tubeless sealant, no flats but good ride quality.

b88

Won't the water dilute the sealant. Will it still seal the punctures.

b88

No, I just changed the rim tape before I stopped riding. Don't ride winter. Shook the crap out of the wheel. Air is holding for now. Well know when I ride and out some weight on it.

Chandne

I have been tubeless on Mtn bikes since 2004...well before most mtn bikers were tubeless. Gravel too since I started gravel several years ago, so I'm comfortable with tubeless. Road tubeless is more recent. I love it but I cannot say that tubes sucked. Our roads and paths are pretty good. Still, I love the ability to run low PSI on fatter tires and the grip is great. That road feel is just smooth, and I'm not going back. I don't really clean out sealant. I just refill and ride. When the tire is done, it is done. It certainly IS more complex a process than tubes.

tempocyclist

I'm still not 100% sold on road tubeless (even though my Aeroad is currently tubeless). The small punctures seal, but seem to lose a lot of pressure before they do. Plus I get so few flats that running tubes is rarely an issue. Get a flat with tubes? It's a five minute roadside fix. No dramas I'll see how my opinion changes over a few more thousand tubeless road miles.

For sub 60-psi options like MTB and gravel, tubeless is king. I'd never go back to running tubes in those situations.

b88

I should had made it more clear cleaning out the tires, I meant pulling the dried up crap off the beads. I'm even too lazy for that lol. Apologies.

Fredo76

Just bought tubes for the 48mm Herse tires, which won't seat. I have a limited tolerance for pneumatic silliness.

Half of my road wheels and tires are tubed clincher, and the other half are sew-ups. Evangelists may pout. Never had a pinch flat in my life. Always a first time, though!

Chandne

I have been using wide rims with 25mm inner width so 60 PSI is about it now...shoudl make it more practical. I agree that 90 PSI, for example, is not an effective level for tubeless. It basically blows out too fast. The ONLY flat I had was with a Schwalbe Pro One many years ago. I was on narrower rims and using 85ish. It did seal with Orange Seal but only when the PSI had dropped to about 55-60. When I got home, it was about 50 PSI and stayed there.

Mtracer

I've had trouble with some tires leaking through the sidewalls. Extremely small leaks. With the tire under water, the bubbles look like the small ones you get in a glass with soda. But there can be dozens of them. When I tried Stan's sealant, it just never would seal the side walls with these leaks. Though it was damn good at sealing actual punctures. I've found Orange Seal seals the sidewalls, but even that can take a few rides to completely do the job. Bottom line, sealants can vary in how well they handle different things.

Yeah, I certainly have to take time to wipe down the bead area of a rim. Usually the dried crap is on the tire not the rim. And I'm usually replacing the tire, so that doesn't matter. But sometimes, I'll be reinstalling a tire for some reason and it does take a few minutes to roll the dried sealant off the bead of the tire.

I run tubeless in my road setup. I'm currently running 28 mm GP 5000's in 25 mm internal rims. The actual tire width installed is 30 mm. Optimum PSI, according to the Silca calculator is about 70 PSI. So, still not too high. But obviously with narrower tires or higher pressures, if your lucky enough to ride smooth roads, I could see there might be a point where you lose a lot of pressure fast due to high pressure and the smaller volume of the tire. But, still, this just means you get out your pump or CO2 cartridge. That same leak with a tube and you're pulling a tire off the rim, and getting out your pump or CO2.

I did find that bacon strip plugs can push out at these higher pressures. But I switched to Dynaplugs and those have worked great.

daihard 

I just checked out the Silca calculator. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't distinguish between tubed and tubeless tires, but my understanding is that you can run tubeless tires with lower pressure. So when the calculator says my optimal pressure is 74/76 PSI for the "puncture resistant tire tubeless/latex tube", how should I interpret it? Are they really the optimal values for both types of tires?

elcruxio

I could only find testing with butyl tube where the normal modelbis slower. I'm not just ready to assume however that latex tube just makes all the difference without seeing the numbers first. In any case the difference is going to be slight. And you can tubeless at lower pressures in the rough.

The normal gp5000 28mm with a latex tube is 325g whereas the tubeless with a valve is 288g. So you've got some room for sealant too. Just enough for a road tire in fact. So I suppose it's pretty even.

I used in my comparison the commonly found vittoria latex tube. I'm assuming that's ok?

That's more of a mountain bike thing. With road you'd need to be running pressures way below anything sensible to burp. Or run into a curb really hard. I did my first road tubeless with non tubeless rims and only burped once. By running imto a curb hard. But only lost a bit of pressure and sealant.

With the tighter interface and sometimes locked bead shelves the tire will remain on the rim better when deflated than your typical clincher. Of course a tubeless is less likely to deflate in any case but it does happen.

I suppose each to their own. I hate flats enough that sealant isn't an issue for me. And on my favorite route (the archipelago route) flatting on certain islands will mean the difference between a successful ride and cancelling. I don't need that stress man...

I suppose latex tubes aren't completely puncture proof either?

elcruxio

yes it'll dilute it but that is also the point of adding water. If I leave the sealant alone for too long it'll dry up into sealant boogers and the rest will be a sludge that won't seal anything. Adding water prevents the boogers and makes the sealant runny again.

Mind you this only works with the OKO magic milk sealant. Other sealants aren't water soluble I think.

Koyote

Umm...what?

If you've not had to fix a flat during five years of riding tubeless, why are you still carrying a couple of tubes?

And if you want to carry a couple of tubes 'just in case,' how does that "negate any advantage to running tubeless"? You'd still be carrying them if you weren't tubeless, but you'd lose the benefits of having the sealant fix your punctures while you ride.

And if you are paying '65 a bottle' for sealant, I must ask about your currency; is that pesos, yen, or what? 'Cause it sure ain't dollars.

If you are tired of tubeless, sure, skip it; but your reasons aren't logical, at least as you've explained them here.

mschwett 

i don’t remember how many flats I got on tubes in a few months last year, but it was a lot. I have not gotten a single ride ending flat in around 10,000 tubeless miles. I’ve also never cleaned out a tire or made a mess with sealant. just add a bit once in a while.

i got a small spray of sealant coming out of my front tire on a 3500’ descent a few weekends ago. stopped. bit of glass embedded pretty deeply. tire was at around 20 psi. hit it with a CO2 inflator, spun it around a bit, and continued the descent. may have taken one minute, maybe two. tubes are dead to me.

Mtracer

As you have seen, you can select from several options as shown below. They are considering tubeless and latex tubes as requiring the same pressure to minimize rolling resistance. Going above this pressure means your rolling resistance goes up very quickly due to the rough surfaces of the road bouncing you around. It is not saying tubeless and latex tubes perform the same, just that the optimum pressures for minimizing rolling resistance are the same regardless.

Concerning running tubeless at lower pressure, this is more of an MTB and gravel thing. It doesn't mean the tire has lower rolling resistance at lower pressure when run tubeless. It means you can run at a low pressure and avoid pinch flats since there is no tube to pinch. While running your MTB at a low pressure may not be the optimal rolling resistance, there are other reasons to run low pressure related to traction and handling.

daihard 

Thanks for the explanation. I was ignorant of the differences between butyl and latex tubes, to begin with. And the results aren't that much different when I switched from "puncture resistant tubeless/lax tube" to "mid-range casing with butyl tube," which tells me I was riding with much higher tire pressure (i.e. around 100 PSI) on my clinchers than optimal.

chaadster

I’ve been running high-pressure, road tubeless since ‘13, so 10 years now, and have no plans to go back to tubes.

I keep three roadies tubeless. Despite running upwards of 100psi, I get effective puncture sealing most of the time, without significant pressure loss. I’ve had big cuts that wouldn’t seal or required stopping to get sealed and aired back up, but only three times that I recall in those 10 years. Sealants have gotten better, so I think that’s part of why it hasn’t happened since ‘17, but mostly it’s just odds/luck when it comes to tire cuts. Usually, I hear a little rhythmic hissing which goes away in a few seconds, or I find sealant spray on the frame during cleaning, indicating I punctured at some point butt didn’t even notice.

My utility bike is also tubeless, 650bx48.

My gravel bike is tubed with TPU, but only because I couldn’t get the Herse Extralight casing to reliably seal. TPU is like 90% the performance of tubeless, though, so it’s fine, and that Herse rubber is sweet, so worth it.

Bikes I ride infrequently stay tubed, so it’s easier to get them ready when desired.

Tubeless is neither perfect nor painless necessarily, but with the right tools and a good rim/tire match, it can be.

Leisesturm

The original tubeless tire was designed for use with cars. 30psi in a car tire is very high. Most run in the mid-high 20 something psi. If you use goop sealant at those pressures it actually works. That's why the MTB riders are on the fence but the roadies are all crawling back to tubes. At 100psi the Stan's just doesn't have a chance. Ever see a car tire off the rim? The tread area is an inch thick! Drive a plug into an inch of rubber and it will stay there. For years!

An inch of solid rubber compound, chock full of Kevlar belting, braided steel cabling. Goatheads? Punctures are rare on modern car tires. But it does happen, because roads are full of incredibly sharp and nasty stuff, and car tires are incredibly expensive at $45/ea. so drivers run them until the Les Schwab tech refuses to repair them. But even the toughest bike tire made is like Gossamer compared to a Steel Belted Radial. I just bought my first pair of Schwalbe Marathon Plusses. I had heard for years how horribly heavy they are, and the ride, just dreadful, sloooooow. I don't know. I was expecting maybe 1/4" thick at the contact patch? I've got them in the garage and cripes the thickest part of the tread can't even be 1/8" thick! You call that heavy? Kenda Kwests flat 3x/dy and Schwalbe Big Apple 2x/mo. and Schwalbe Marathon 1x/mo. where I ride. Bontrager Hardcase, Marathon Plus and Conti Gatorskin are all essentially 1x/2yr like automotive tires.

It just isn't possible to make an ultra-flatproof tire light and supple. If tubeless tires were being ridden in the downtown areas they would flat every day just like any other tire of similar flimsy construction. The satisfied tubeless rider has good roads, with a minimum of flat hazards, and any tubed clincher would also do well there. The rolling resistance of a tubed racing clincher at 120psi is already impressively low. I'm not sure it matters if a tubeless tire has lower rolling resistance because at 20mph the aerodynamic drag on the rider/bike system is 99% of total drag! Let's keep things in perspective. Tubeless is an answer to a question no one asked. They have no advantages anyone can actually use. They run a price premium over tubed at every step of the adoption curve. If you get from all of that that I don't have tubeless on any of my bikes you would be correct.

elcruxio

In cars it only technically works since it adds vibrations

Are they though? Really? It was my impression that pretty much every mtb rider with any amount of ambition was running tubeless.

I'm not sure that's true either... seems like a statement that was freshly pulled out of a place where the sun shineth notte.

It is indeed a good thing people have been realizing that high pressures are slow and rarely ride 100psi. I'd have to ride 25mm tires to get to those pressures. I'm much happier with my 40mm tires and 50psi.

Not sure how that's relevant but ok...

You sure do go through and oddly high number of tires... maybe. That was a bit difficult to understand.

true.

Without sealant? Probably. With sealant? There'd probably be a lot of mysterious white specks on the tire.

About that.. So in the winter time it's common practice here to sow the streets with this crushed granite, which I believe is called macadam, to prevent slipperiness. These crushed stone "pellets" are often in the shape of triangles or arrowheads and are around 1cm long. Worst part is, last of the stuff gets sweeped off around mid june.

So I've had these arrowheads punch right through a layer of schwalbe plus protection belt. We've had that happen several times now. With my road bike on its first ride I managed to ride all of 10km before flatting on one of those arrowheads. That was with a tubed performance tire. After I switched to tubeless and rode regularly over said arrowheads I've flatted exactly zero times.

It's not though. That much pressure is going to be slow outside of a velodrome.

What if I can't maintain a 20mph average speed over 100+km? I'd rather take 30 watts of rolling resistance than 80 or even more

I can.

They're a bit more expensive but you save by not having to buy latex tubes.

​​​​​​​I'm sure this surprised absolutely no one.

staehpj1

I have tubeless only on one bike, but it is my daily ride. It is a hard tail 29er MTB. I used to get thorn flats once a week or so with tubes. I bought a set of tubeless ready wheels and some tubeles tires and went two years without a flat. When I eventually did get a flat it was a small cut in the sidewall. Even then after a shot of CO2 it got me home. I rode on it daily for a couple weeks and it again started slowly losing air.

The tires were pretty worn anyway so I decided to replace them. When I pulled them off I found that the sealant in the one that had CO2 in it had separated. The latex had all precipitated out and the liquid was all transparent amber colored. It sealant in the other tire was normal looking. The only difference that I know of that might have caused that was the CO2. I checked and found that they advise against using CO2 with the sealant. So I'd suggest either not using CO2 with sealant or letting it out and airing up with just air asap after using it.

I don't think I'd buy a MTB, gravel, or touring bike without tubeless these days. On a road bike I'd at least want the option even if I decided to run tubes, so if buying new I'd buy tubeless ready. I have no experience with tubeless on skinny tires though.

Trsnrtr

My main bike is tubeless but my spare bikes that rarely get ridden have been converted back to tubes (TPU),