My own Tubeless saga continues, I am at the point where I think the fact that I am rather hefty (somewhere around the 110kg mark) is spoiling this whole experience.
A couple of weeks back on the January 200 I was on the first long ride on the tubeless set up since the Santa Special (where I also ended up running a tube due to a slash in the tyre) and about halfway into the ride just approaching the control I felt the rear tyre going down. At the control I quickly found the hole as there was sealant coming out, it was a tiny hole and I have no idea why the sealant could not do the job. I finished the rest of the ride with a tube.
I decided at that point that I should try a different sealant so I took the tyres off. While doing this I noticed that the Stans tape was actually moving about and that there was a lot of build up of the sealant around the tape. This led me to assume that most of the 'good stuff' in the sealant was being used to seal these holes and therefore when something breached the tyre nothing was left to seal it.
I took the tape off both wheels and retaped with 2 layers of Gorilla Tape over the full width of the wheel. I fixed the hole with patch and reseated the tyres (with much vigorous pumping on the front and I submitted to CO2 on the back) then let them down added 60mls of sealant to each tyre (Hutchinson Sector 28) and inflated them to max pressure overnight. The next morning they had pretty much held all the air so I let them down and adjusted the pressure to 80psi (by my pump).
The tyre ride absolutely beautifully again. I managed several short rides with no problems and they were holding air much better than previously. In a week they lost less than 10 PSI, I hoped I had things sorted.
This weekend I went on a 100km ride, about 60km in I must have hit a flint and sealant started to spray out. I kept riding hoping it would seal but every revolution a gush of white fluid would squirt form the tyre. I stopped and turned the tyre so that the hole was at the bottom (it was a good sized hole) and it seemed to stop leaking. I pumped the tyre up again and it was holding....until I put weight on it and it started leaking again.
My next solution was to use the Dynaplug I had got for Chirstmas, I suspect the hole was to big as when I got the plug in the remaining air instantly leaked out around the plug, I wasn't going to add a second plug. By the look of my Mudguard and fork there was going to be little to no sealant left in the there. So I took one bead off, pulled out the plug and put a tube in to get me home, again.
The Hutchinsons are coming off, another failed experiment as far as I am concenred. I have a set of Schwalbe S-Ones that will be going on, it seems they have a reasonably good protective layer in the V-Guard that will hopefully stop the slashes, if it doesn't I'm going to have to admit defeat and go back to the tyre and tube set up, I can't be dealing with a puncture on every single ride of any length what ever the comfort advantages are.
I don't want to put people off, I can absolutely see a good side to this set up and I know plenty of you run tubeless with nothing but success. For me it's all wearing a bit thin but I am tyring to avoid going back to Durano Plus/marathon Plus rides as I do really like the feel the tubeless tyres bring.
I will keep the thread updated with how the Schwalbe's do.
If anyone wants a set of lightly used (repaired with Hutchinson patches) Sector 28's (pretty sure the back one has no cuts, just a couple of small holes) let me know, I won't be needing them again!
