The tubeless experiment.

This is the fist of a series of irregular posts on an (expensive) experiment I am conducting with tubeless tires. I know others are running these tires but it is still hard to get information about these set-ups, especially on how they perform locally, so I figured I would share. If you have or are running tubeless, especially in Ontario please join the discussion.

A quick why. I needed new wheels and I knew I wanted to move on from clinchers. But I am going to spend over a year out of the country with only a cross bike and wanted to easily be able to switch from a cross to road set-up. Tubular wheels, glue and the like would not exactly make this easy. And a dedicated pair of tubular wheels just for cross was not an option. Plus, tubeless on a mountain bike is most excellent. So even though I am a Luddite and loath to change I made a bet on tubeless figuring worse case was that I could run them as clinchers if it did not work and get tubulars when I get back to Ontario. And if it does work the joys of low air pressure without the hassle of glue – perfect. Or close enough for me with my constraints.

The set-up. I have two wheel-sets set up for tubeless. I am using Hutchinson Bulldog tires on both sets. Hutchinson makes the only tubeless ready cross tires out right now – though Stan’s is supposed to have one on the way.  And there are plenty of people experimenting with sealant and non-tubeless ready clinchers – with highly varying results.

The wheels. The high bling set-up is Dura-ace tubeless ready wheels. They are light and pretty. The tires mounted very easily on these wheels. They also inflated with absolutely no issues- which is not always the case with tubeless set-ups on Mt bikes. After adding Stan’s sealant (check out their website for a wealth of additional information) the tires held air as well as clinchers – at least sitting around.

The back-up wheels are an older pair of Krysiriums. I used Stan’s cross rim strips to covert these to tubeless. Mounting the tires on these rims was a massive headache. They went on but not without lots of cursing and a bit of blood. On the plus side the tires are on tight – really tight. But one of the nice things about tubeless on the Mt Bike is that in the event of a (rare) flat you stuff a tube in and ride home. I can not imagine the effort required to do that with this set-up. Again inflation was no effort and with sealant they have been holding air for 3 days with no discernable leakage. 

Do they work? I took the Dura-ace wheels to Mid-Weeks cross thing on Tuesday. Started at 40 PSI and kept letting air out through the night. They seemed to work as advertised. Tires stayed on the rim, traction was good and so on. One issue – on hard hits the tires were burping. Not big burps but tiny amounts of air were escaping. But I rode from 6.30 to 8 and did not notice the air loss so it was minimal.

I played with that today and on each burp sealant would get between the rim and the wheel. After hitting a spot a couple of times it would stop burping. Apparently the sealant was working its way between the rim and wheel and forming a true seal. So I added some more sealant and basically burped the tires over and over until it stopped – hopefully sealing them for good?  I could not get the other wheels to burp in this manner even at really low pressures- so perhaps the tighter fit helps?

Anyway it seems to work – so far. I am riding the back-up wheels tomorrow. Hopefully no tires exploding off rims (it happens  -again check out the forums on Stan’s). And assuming no real problems I will race on which ever set I have more trust in on Sunday. Look for an update next week. And be careful passing me – experimental wheels and tires may explode at any time.