IS TUBELESS 2BLISSFUL, 2 LEGIT 2 QUIT or 2 TUBES SHORT OF BEING A GOOD IDEA?

Love the ride of the Shimano tubeless wheelset I’m rocking with Hutchinson tubeless tires.

 

Have been running 95 psi in both front and rear tires. They feel fast and roll down tests versus my regular clinchers back up my intuition. The cornering is the best I’ve ever experienced on any wheel/tire combo—seriously laterally stiff, seriously grippy. The rounder casing versus a conventional clincher/tube setup makes for smoother transitions in and out of leans. Generally I find myself cornering more confidently, at higher speeds, using more aggressive lines as compared to my previous setup (32 spoke PT hub/Mavic rim rear, Bontrager Race Lite X front) and they corner far better than any clincher I’ve tried.

 

Dealing with flats kind of blows. I run a scoop of Stan’s No Tubes in each tire. For a while, this setup seemed bullet proof. I generally get few flats and obsessively wipe debris off my front and rear tires about once every two blocks in the city. This works pretty well with a clincher/tube setup. For about a month the stiffer casing of the Hutchinson tubeless tires combined with running No Tubes yielded zero flats.

 

Then on my last ‘recovery’ ride I got a flat, the No Tubes sealed it up, but not until I only had about 20 or 30 PSI in the tire. Still, I was able to ride home standing (about eight miles) with my weight centered over the front of the bike. I’d slightly lift the rear wheel every time there was a bump in the rode. The wheels were slightly out of true when I got home, but not much.

 

Pumped the tire back to 95 psi and the Stan’s seemed to have sealed her off. I rode my cross bike for a few days before returning to the road bike for another recovery ride. The tire hadn’t lost any pressure and things seemed to be going okay. About 15 miles into the ride, I got a small puncture on the edge of where the tread meets the casing. Pulled over, pumped it up again (soooo stoked I switched back to carrying a frame pump instead of a mini pump—frame pumps work) but this time the seal would not hold.

 

Ended up having to remove the tubeless valve and stick a tube in the tire. Once pumped up to the same pressure it still rolled fast but the ride was markedly less comfortable and road sensitivity was severely diminished. The difference was notable. The bigger bummer, though, was that I have dried up Stan’s gunk all over the bead of the tire and when I examined the tire, I noticed enough cuts in the tread to think it inadvisable to ride this particular tire without a tube any longer.

 

$.02