Tubeless Tires: the call-a-friend solution to flats?

thats what its rated at.

You can’t boot a tire descending at 35-45mph.

Here is another long-ish descent, we’ve got a lot of them around here:

I was scrubbing speed on that one.

or a short screamer from the same ride:

inserts - the safety of tubulars without the hassle.

Well, I lost the GC of a reasonably competitive euro gran fondo (yes piss off gran fondos are races :grin:) because I didn’t have a liner in and my tyre wouldn’t plug or hold air (4 plugs, 4 co2s), so I had to do the last 20k of one of the stages on a totally flat rear.

So I now have a liner in the rear, because I don’t have a team car.

I can see that if you had a team car, this would be less of an issue for you.

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annndddd… queue up the replies from everyone that never flats :rofl:

Which is a great way to get the universe to pay attention to you and remedy that particular little oversight.

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:rofl: yes, indeed, my former Wed and Sat ride leader did not allow anyone to say the F word (flat) before a ride.

I’ve had a side wall tear/ blow out on a descent tubed - I kept it upright, but event over. It convinced me of inserts when I went tubeless - would’ve been safer for the blow out, and I could’ve limped to a bikeshop or the next support stop. The boots didn’t hold in the tyre with a tube so it was event over.

I’ve probably said already on this thread, but personally I think limited enough occasions where it won’t seal with dynaplugs (even a couple) and a boot would work with a tube for further distance than you could “ride flat”.

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Even Froome knows the pain…

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Maybe this isn’t the best place to ask, but hopefully it’s close enough.
I’m a bit resistant to change in general… I still run tubes in both bikes (MTB & Road/Gravel). I understand and agree with all the benefits of tubeless, so I’m not looking to be convinced that it’s better. Thankfully, I don’t really encounter many tube-specific issues, but I do wonder on what I could be missing out. On to the issue/question…
Unfortunately, these days, I only go for actual bike rides every few months. These rides are usually spur-of-the-moment and a bit hurried. (There’s definitely a discussion to be had there to fix that life issue.) So, when an opportunity presents itself, I pump up the tires and go. From what I understand, the sealant would dry up between these rides, meaning I would have to refill sealant (and remove old stuff?) before taking off for a ride. Am I missing something here? Or just missing an opportunity? Again, other than the implied opportunity to plan life better to ride more…

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You shouldn’t need to remove sealant under normal circumstances, but it might be advisable to rotate the wheels so you don’t have a big booger in one spot. But yeah, you got it right, we have to add fluid every 3 or so months, depending on the sealant used and temps. My backup full sus bike doesn’t get ridden enough, so before I ride it I take the wheels off and shake them, listening for any sloshing. No sloshing = add fluid. But I don’t have any need to pull the booger out, except on the rare occassion it gets loose and starts clunking around (it’s annoying).

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In this very specific case, I would stick with tubes. It’s not worth the cost or hassle to switch. Yes, sealant does dry out, and faster than I would like. Your choice is between spending a lot of money to switch, and then checking/refilling them before every monthly ride, or just pump and go. I’d choose pump and go.

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^^^

we have 3 casual bikes in the garage, grocery store bike for me, and 2 cruisers for wife/kids. Tubes for the win!

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I mean, you could always just squirt a little water into your tubes every so often?

Or use a sealant that never dries out like muc off. Unfortunately it then also never seals punctures.

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I carry plugs. But I’ve needed International Rescue (the wife) on one occasion - the side of the tyre split - but that would have been the same result with a tubed tyre. I needed IR a few times before I went tubeless - e.g. four punctures on one ride, to take a friend to hospital, etc.

I had the same, due to a crash. Patched myself (and it*) up and carried on the ride.

*park tool tyre boot and TPU tube that I’d only recently started carrying after a friend had a ride-ending sidewall slash, having ridden tubeless for 5 years without carrying one.

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The real challenge isn’t so much how to carry it but where you’re willing to let some still-wet sealant come in contact with your kit. IME if it goes onto a garment wet and then manages to dry before washing then it never comes out again.

Thankfully I’ve never had to do this but have seen a few inserts in back pockets and have thought about the over-the-shoulder considerations. Up the back of the jersey FTW for me in this instance - any permanent sealant stains would at least be on the inside of the jersey and the outside of the bibs/baselayer, even though they’d still likely be visible from the outside.

+1 for this. Also depending on the bike and type of riding it might be way easier/cheaper to keep a dedicated spare tube and lever(s) attached to that particular bike, where my dynaplug stuff is shared across bikes due to it’s high cost and I have to remember to bring it with me if I want that kind of insurance.

My city lockup doesn’t even have spares on it - just GP 4 seasons which are reasonably puncture resistant. If I flat I’m walking, unless there happens to be a bike shop nearby that will sell me a tube - much higher likelihood of that than of finding a tubeless solution in the wild.

Emphasis on “normal circumstances” - usually even a seldom-used bike will have sealant circulating well enough that if it dries out there’s not much of a hardened-puddle ‘lump’ stuck in any one place, but on my most neglected MTB I did once manage to get so much dried sealant in one spot in each tire that the wheels were noticeably out of weight balance - enough that it affected how the bike rode and I had to invert the casing over my knee and get a knife and ‘shave’ lumps of the stuff off.
(I suspect I did that by adding sealant for 1 ride, then leaving the bike for months til it dried, adding sealant for another ride, then leaving the bike til it dried, and then doing it again a third time. That bike was hung on a wall hook and I suspect each time I put it away the wheels rotated until they were heavy-side down, meaning that multiple successive sealant topups dried on top of each other in exactly the same place in the tire.)

I think if forced to remove an insert I would be wiping it in dirt or mud or pretty much anything to get the sealant off. That or binning it. Will ruin anything it touches.

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Descended almost 17km with this gash. The road was partly gone and closed off due to a landslide (if I had anyone to pick me up) but I got back on the airliner

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Not meaning to offend but I do not fully get where the OP is coming from. A tubeless tire is a variation on clincher tech, little more. Tire construction varies somewhat and rim bed shaping is different but neither of these thing prevent one from removing a flatted tubeless tire and installing a tube. I have done this on a few occasions, most recently on the 4th of July. I was 25 miles from home when I flatted, put in a tube and finished a metric for that ride. I had to do that since my sealant had dried out. Normally it is a good bit messier but it is not really that much of a problem. For my use case tubeless is so superior to running tubes that any added inconveniences are well worth it. Sealant has gotten me home so many times I literally cannot count.