Author Topic: To go tubeless or stay tubed.  (Read 26865 times)

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #25 on: 13 January, 2021, 11:12:11 am »
If I ever get back to riding CX, I'm using tubeless. You can run much lower pressures without pinch flatting a tubed tyre (or having to deal with tubulars). Likewise MTB.

When you're talking trikes, I assume you're talking upright ones?  I don't think there are any tubeless solutions in 20" rims for recumbents are there?

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #26 on: 13 January, 2021, 12:03:38 pm »


there is a whole discussion about tubeless tyre retention on the rim when tyres are built light. We've had this discussion  before and as usual it contained plenty of stupid insults combined with a lack of actual facts or understanding of what was happening from the usual shouty  morons (who are fortunately few in number). The bottom line is that bead hooks on rims don't (can't) reliably help to retain tubeless tyres on rims, because (depending on where the tyre actually seals) the air pressure in the tyre isn't definitely pushing the tyre bead into the rim hook, in contrast to when a tube is used, when it definitely is.  Tubeless rim standards currently include only the smallest rim hooks and some tubeless rims have no hooks at all. Which may be fine if you are using tubeless tyres at low pressures, but it also means that you can't safely  run tubed tyres at high pressures on such rims either; the abbreviated or non-existent hooks do not provide secure tyre retention.

For example DT-Swiss recommendations are on the first two pages here

https://www.dtswiss.com/pmt/00/00/00/00/00/00/00/10/00/00/00/85/8/MAN_WXWXXXXXX1610S_WEB_ZZ_001.pdf

and for their hookless rims they don't recommend more than 73psi regardless of tyre type or width.   Which I for one would find a problem.

Their recommendation is that higher pressures can be used with their hooked rims and that with tubeless the maximum pressure ought to be at least 20psi less than is possible with tubed tyres.  I suspect they are being a bit ambitious in that they are saying considerably higher tubeless pressures are possible with hooked rims than hookless rims; both theory and practice says this is asking for trouble, and probably contributed to the incident pictured above.




Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #27 on: 13 January, 2021, 12:37:48 pm »
Top tip.   Follow the manufacturers instructions   ;)    :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Is that photo of a tyre you installed, Brucey?   Looks like it  ;D ;D

Davef

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #28 on: 13 January, 2021, 01:09:49 pm »
Top tip.   Follow the manufacturers instructions   ;)    :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Is that photo of a tyre you installed, Brucey?   Looks like it  ;D ;D
Some manufacturers are erring so far on the side of caution it is almost at the “only inflate by mouth” stage.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #29 on: 13 January, 2021, 01:26:27 pm »
77psi max for a 32mm tyre?

Seems about right.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #30 on: 13 January, 2021, 01:32:01 pm »
Top tip.   Follow the manufacturers instructions   ;)    :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Is that photo of a tyre you installed, Brucey?   Looks like it  ;D ;D

The image comes from a Jan Hein article. Being admitted that the image wasn’t one of an actual tyre blowing off a rim and it’s probably stayed as an exemplar of what could happen.

I understand Brucey’s points and, when I first responded, had considered whether to get into discussion of hookless rims etc but left it.

I’m going to take a week out now because there is too much insult being thrown around here and elsewhere and life is too short. Brucey, you chose to take part in that so call I g it out is a bit pointless. However, I know I can insulted as much anyone like possibly want by arguing with Covid deniers on Twitter - we should treat each other excellently here.

Lecture over. See you in a week.

Davef

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #31 on: 13 January, 2021, 01:39:53 pm »
77psi max for a 32mm tyre?

Seems about right.
My 32mm tyre has a manufactures max of 85psi.
My wheel manufacture is suggesting at below 50psi.
I will double check in case I have made this up.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #32 on: 13 January, 2021, 03:14:14 pm »
Well, thank you for all your input, especially Brucey though I wish you wouldn’t sit on the fence so much and be a bit more decisive  :)
I’ve decided to bite the bullet and dip a toe in the shark infested waters of tubeless tyres, and have ordered the kit.
I am often asked, what does YOAV stand for? It stands for Yoav On A Velo

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #33 on: 13 January, 2021, 03:25:12 pm »
Bad move.

They don't work, they are impossible to install because they are simulataneously too tight but also too loose, and even if you do manage to install them (which you won't because they are impossible to install) the tyre will roll off and you will die, but not only that you will die covered in a fishy white splatter that your next of kin will have to explain away as a freak accident.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #34 on: 13 January, 2021, 03:57:09 pm »
Well, anyone who knows me knows I like to live life on the edge ....
I am often asked, what does YOAV stand for? It stands for Yoav On A Velo

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #35 on: 13 January, 2021, 04:00:16 pm »
Don't forget to wipe the tyre beads with a water with a squirt of washing up liquid in it just before installing  ;)

Do that and most of the issues dont arise. 

What tyre/sealant combo have you gone for?

LittleWheelsandBig

  • Whimsy Rider
Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #36 on: 13 January, 2021, 06:59:37 pm »
By the way, there are a couple of 406 tubeless tyres but few tubeless rims. I have a set to build up when I get some enthusiasm. Perhaps that will happen when I can put some non-local rides in my calendar.
Wheel meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #37 on: 13 January, 2021, 08:16:43 pm »
I used the washing up liquid trick on regular tyres for many years, ever since I saw car and motorbike tyre fitters doing this and wondered why nobody was suggesting this with reluctant bike tyres. I’ve ordered a pair of schwalbe g-one allround 35mm and their sealant.
I am often asked, what does YOAV stand for? It stands for Yoav On A Velo

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #38 on: 14 January, 2021, 12:16:26 am »


there is a whole discussion about tubeless tyre retention on the rim when tyres are built light. We've had this discussion  before and as usual it contained plenty of stupid insults combined with a lack of actual facts or understanding of what was happening from the usual shouty  morons (who are fortunately few in number). The bottom line is that bead hooks on rims don't (can't) reliably help to retain tubeless tyres on rims, because (depending on where the tyre actually seals) the air pressure in the tyre isn't definitely pushing the tyre bead into the rim hook, in contrast to when a tube is used, when it definitely is.  Tubeless rim standards currently include only the smallest rim hooks and some tubeless rims have no hooks at all. Which may be fine if you are using tubeless tyres at low pressures, but it also means that you can't safely  run tubed tyres at high pressures on such rims either; the abbreviated or non-existent hooks do not provide secure tyre retention.

For example DT-Swiss recommendations are on the first two pages here

https://www.dtswiss.com/pmt/00/00/00/00/00/00/00/10/00/00/00/85/8/MAN_WXWXXXXXX1610S_WEB_ZZ_001.pdf

and for their hookless rims they don't recommend more than 73psi regardless of tyre type or width.   Which I for one would find a problem.

Their recommendation is that higher pressures can be used with their hooked rims and that with tubeless the maximum pressure ought to be at least 20psi less than is possible with tubed tyres.  I suspect they are being a bit ambitious in that they are saying considerably higher tubeless pressures are possible with hooked rims than hookless rims; both theory and practice says this is asking for trouble, and probably contributed to the incident pictured above.

I have seen this photo already somewhere. Wasn't there a certain amount of debate about whether the rim and the tyre were actually meant to be tubeless in the first place???

LMT

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #39 on: 14 January, 2021, 12:05:50 pm »
You can do both, ride tubes and tubeless tyres at the same time.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #40 on: 14 January, 2021, 01:06:02 pm »
I just don't feel I have a reason to change. I don't really get punctures much, mostly because I use Marathons on various bikes. And I don't see a need to replace wheels or rims for the sake of it. I'm not sure when/if I'll ever buy a new bike now. If I did, would it having tubeless tyres dissuade me? Not sure, possibly not. What worries me, of course, is wanting a new tyre or rim and finding choice limited because everyone else has made the switch.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #41 on: 14 January, 2021, 01:17:46 pm »
I just don't feel I have a reason to change. I don't really get punctures much, mostly because I use Marathons on various bikes. And I don't see a need to replace wheels or rims for the sake of it. I'm not sure when/if I'll ever buy a new bike now. If I did, would it having tubeless tyres dissuade me? Not sure, possibly not. What worries me, of course, is wanting a new tyre or rim and finding choice limited because everyone else has made the switch.

If you see no advantage for you then there is no reason to use them, at all. I don't use them on all my bikes. 

I'll give you an example of why I might/might not use them:  I have an astonishingly fun fixie, I built from a carbon race frame and an ENO eccentric hub.  The hub is a minor ballache to readjust on the fly (for chain tension) because to do a good job you need a spanner to rotate it. I could dremel one out of a piece of plastic, but haven't got round to it yet, instead I carry a cone spanner. It's still a bit of a ballache and I'd rather not have to remove the rear wheel in the case of a puncture, get everything including chain tension set properly and then torque up the bolts, especially if it is dark and I'm in a hurry to get to work, because there is a safety issue.  So I'm considering replacing the rear rim with tubeless when the current one wears out.  For the time being its got a Schwalbe Durano Plus. No puncture, but it is a bit lumpy and leaden to ride. Some people (well, one person   ::-) )  might start having kittens at the prospect of a mismatch of tyre, with one tubed, and the other tubeless..but it makes no difference. The requisite kit is the same...I just wouldn't bother taking the spanner anymore.

Makes sense on that bike. Doesn't make sense if you rarely puncture because you use bombproof tyres, unless you fancy using lighter more supple tyres and want to avoid the puncture hassles.




Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #42 on: 14 January, 2021, 02:43:19 pm »
I have seen this photo already somewhere. Wasn't there a certain amount of debate about whether the rim and the tyre were actually meant to be tubeless in the first place???

well yes. At the time I think those tyres were (perhaps wrongly) being sold as tubeless compatible, and it seemingly wasn't understood that the hooked bead would do anything useful in the way of tyre retention; not consistently, anyway. 

In fact I am still not sure that it is widely understood; there are still folk suggesting that if you overpressure a tyre to test it, and it doesn't blow off the rim, that it is 'safe', and DT's recommendations (which I linked to upthread) appear to give tubeless tyres considerable benefit (in terms of pressure rating) when fitted to hook bead rims.

Now if the tyre always seals between the tyre lip and the rim well, maybe this is OK, and maybe this is what usually happens when you mount a new tyre on a new rim etc. But there is no evidence to suggest that this always happens in a real-world situation: All it needs is for the leak rate between the tyre lip and the rim well to be in excess of the leak rate between the rim lip and the tyre higher up, and the tyre bead isn't being  pushed into the rim hook any more and the 'benefit' of a hook bead will be about zero. 

This comparatively simple observation probably explains some of the 'mysterious' tubeless blowouts, even when the tyre initially 'passed' an overpressure test. In the meantime I take advice from all quarters (including from many manufacturers) concerning tubeless tyre pressures with a king-sized pinch of salt.  If you default to the tyre pressures specified for hookless rims (whether your rims are hookless or not) and given a whole list of other 'ifs' concerning the quality of tyre/rim fit etc, then you may be reasonably safe. Otherwise... do you feel lucky...?

BTW to clear up a misunderstanding; when I helped my chum with a problematic tubeless fitment a while back, I only did so because I could see he was struggling and he was grateful for any help, even if it was just pumping the bottle up again (and again). I still don't know quite how he found it within him to persist in trying to fit a tyre to a rim when the fit was clearly looser than it should have been (I'd probably have thrown the lot back in the face of the supplier, along with some terse angle-saxon phraseology), but I do know why; he is a professional bike mechanic and he had a customer due in before too much longer.  To my surprise he prevailed and the customer wasn't disappointed.   He was (quite rightly) completely pissed off with the quality of the parts and lost money on that job; it should take a few minutes, not over an hour even two-handed.   I don't know exactly how commonplace such occurrences are but there were dark mutterings of the kind that usually precede refusal to work on similar equipment subsequently (eg  "if they are daft enough to want to use that crap then they can ****in' well do it themselves").  We shall see.

BTW this may fall into the 'very obvious' category but I didn't mention it previously: When you fit a tube into a failed tubeless tyre there is another significant difference from a tubed puncture.  With a tubed puncture when you find something poking through the tyre you can be reasonably sure that you have just found the culprit. With a tubeless puncture this isn't the case: If the sealant has been working as promised, there may be numerous pointy things stuck through the tread, any one of which can instantly puncture the tube you just struggled to fit.  So you must inspect the tyre very carefully if you don't want to have an immediate repeat performance (assuming that you even have another tube, that is...). Obviously the inside of a tubeless tyre is covered in sticky crap and it is easy to miss something.  In the workshop, if I want to be reasonably sure of a tyre, I need to clean all the sealant off the tyre, and then spend quite a long time inspecting it. [ I have known some of my MTBing chums throw tubed tyres away (eg having gone through a thorn bush) simply because they were not confident about finding every thorn (which can be entirely hidden within the tread thickness of course) no matter how long they spent.] Obviously any inspection carried out by the roadside is unlikely to be very good by comparison.




Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #43 on: 14 January, 2021, 03:16:38 pm »
I’m going to take a week out now because there is too much insult being thrown around here and elsewhere and life is too short. Brucey, you chose to take part in that so call I g it out is a bit pointless. However, I know I can insulted as much anyone like possibly want by arguing with Covid deniers on Twitter - we should treat each other excellently here.

Lecture over. See you in a week.
Perhaps some misread the title: To go lubeless or stay  lubed.



 ;D
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #44 on: 14 January, 2021, 07:56:31 pm »
I'm sticking with tubed.

1. Tubeless would mean new wheels

2. I would lose the flexibility of being able to change tyres easily. That may mean putting the spikes on if there's been a sharp frost after wet weather, a knobblier tyre for a roughstuff trip etc. Tubed, swapping tyres takes about 15 minutes for both wheels.

3. I've a stash of tubed tyres that would get abandoned (I usually buy at special offer prices).

4. Changing the occasional tube isn't much of a problem anyway, registering about 1 or 2 on the 0 to 10 annoyance scale. People (as above) always quote changing a tube in the wet and cold, but that's like car commuters giving getting wet as a reason not to use a bike, and is pretty rare.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #45 on: 14 January, 2021, 08:16:38 pm »
With tubeless, it's never.  :thumbsup:

Your other reasons are all perfectly valid, and were I in your position I would be making the same decisions. I'm not sure why people are now justifying their choice of remaining with tubed tyres. They are a tried and tested technology with advantages and disadvantages. The cost/benefit balance depends on your specific usage, as well as your attitude towards them. It's all cool.

What isn't cool is shrill hyperbolic panic-mongering disinformation from people who have no experience of using tubeless tyres. People can do what they want, but they need to know whether opinions are based on experience or not.

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #46 on: 14 January, 2021, 08:33:12 pm »
Plus ignore the fake tubeless fail photo, published above by Brucey

Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #47 on: 14 January, 2021, 08:55:20 pm »
With tubeless, it's never.  :thumbsup:

Your other reasons are all perfectly valid, and were I in your position I would be making the same decisions. I'm not sure why people are now justifying their choice of remaining with tubed tyres. They are a tried and tested technology with advantages and disadvantages. The cost/benefit balance depends on your specific usage, as well as your attitude towards them. It's all cool.

What isn't cool is shrill hyperbolic panic-mongering disinformation from people who have no experience of using tubeless tyres. People can do what they want, but they need to know whether opinions are based on experience or not.

I for one am very grateful for the tubeless users explaining the advantages (and occasional inconveniences). I t does at least inform me enough to know that it is not an appropriate technology for my cycling activity

TimC

  • Old blerk sometimes onabike.
Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #48 on: 14 January, 2021, 10:30:42 pm »
I use both, as I have a lot of bikes and I am not spending money to convert all of them! In the last five years, I've had just two or three punctures to my tubed bikes, and one unnecessarily violent and bloody attack by a flint on a tubeless tyre. It didn't survive the experience, but I'm pretty sure no race tyre would have done (it was a Schwalbe One). Fortunately I was within walking distance of home (about 3 miles) as I didn't have a boot long enough (I needed about 8". Stop sniggering at the back) and my emergency tube took great delight in demonstrating the effects of air pressure on an unconstrained flexible membrane. The 'pop' was LOUD.

It's quite possible that there's no way I could have made any worthwhile temporary repair to that tyre, even if I'd had a full Audax-style workshop with me, so I can't really lay that one down to any inadequacy of tubeless. However, it does mean I now carry two tubes and a decent boot with me on every ride, whether on a tubed or tubeless bike.

zigzag

  • unfuckwithable
Re: To go tubeless or stay tubed.
« Reply #49 on: 14 January, 2021, 11:59:00 pm »
my suggestion is to go tubeless, there are a few things to learn, but it's worth it. not all my bikes are that way (for various reasons), but the ones that are haven't caused me any trouble, only improved ride quality and puncture resistance.