Anyone Already Riding Tubeless?
I'm looking at Stan's Tubeless Conversion Kit http://www.notubes.com/Road-Tubeless-C78.aspx for my training wheels.
At first, I thought that I had to purchase new wheels to go with the tubeless tires. But, apparently, that's not the case.
Who in da Haus has already converted? As good as advertised?
0
Comments
I would be interested to hear.
Best I can tell, a big problem is that they are hard to repair on the road. Need an air compressor to inflate. I guess that on the road repair is using a tube. But repairs needed less often?
That said, I know people that swear by tubeless for lower PSI applications like mountain biking and CX, but it seems they are not nearly as populate for high psi road tires. I think this has to do with less chance of pinch flats when running lower PSI and that with lower PSI the sealant can seal faster and more effectively when a puncture happens.
Ok. Today I converted my wheels to tubeless. It went pretty much flawless and according to the instructions.
I looked into this for a long time, since last year when I did the Full Vineman and I had two flats and almost DNF'd. I'm really terrible at changing tires. I SUCK at it. I'm slow, break tire levers, and I'm slow. Did I say I'm slow? Super Slow. And my hands/fingers always hate afterwards. Anyway, I wanted to find a way to deal with flats faster or avoid them entirely. Stan's seems to offer the no-flat solution. It's my hope that this really works for me.
So, I bought Stan's NoTubes Road Tubeless Bundle - Fusion 3 from Wheelbuilder a few weeks ago. I paid $160 + tax/shipping. The bundle comes with:
--Two Hutchinson Fusion 3 road tubeless tires
--Two Stan's universal 44mm road tubeless valve stems
--Two 2 ounce bottles of Stan's Tire Sealant
--One roll of 10yd21mm Tape
In addition to the above, I needed the following to do the install:
--needle nose pliers
--a bucket
--dishwashing soap
--a soft brush
--scotch brite pad
--floor pump (I have a JoeBlow Sport)
--towel(s)
--tire levers
The wheels that I converted are two Neuvation R 440's. These aren't on the Stan's list of approved wheels so I made sure with the manufacturer that these would be compatible with a tubeless tire.
The steps I followed are the same that show up in the video on Stan's No Tubes website. Here they are as I followed them. It took me about 2 hours for the first wheel and 30 minutes for the second. I definitely got faster the second time around because I understood the process.
1. Remove the tire from rim and remove the rim strip.
2. Sand the inner part of the rim where tire/tube go with scotch brite pad
3. Clean the inner part of rim with rubbing alcohol. Can use any solvent that is rim-safe.
4. Add 2 layers of yellow spoke tape to the rim. The how-to is in the video. (this seals the spoke holes)
5. Mount the first bead of the Fusion 3 tire and the valve stem per the video
6. Mount the second bead
7. Apply soapy water in between tire bead and rim, pad it down, hang the rim. The soap acts like a lubricant for seating the beads in next step
8. Inflate the tire w/ my floor pump. This seats the bead on the rim. I could hear some light pops as the tire seated. I only needed to inflate up to approx 80 psi to seal the bead. It was holding air pretty well at that point.
9. Deflate the tire and remove the valve core with pliers. I had no idea how to do this so I had to youtube this b/c there's no video on Stans site.
10. Add the sealant from one of the 2 oz bottles.
11. Put the valve core back in and re-inflated the tire to 90 psi.
12. Remove pump and spin the wheel around for a bit to get the sealant around the inside of tire.
13. Apply soapy water all around tire, valve, spokes looking for any air bubbles. I did find bubbles around the valve of wheel #1 so I held wheel with valve at bottom and shook it. Soon the bubbling stopped as the sealant found the leak and sealed it.
14. Repeat for next wheel.
DONE!
I took the bike out for a ride and it rides just great. I noticed that going over bumps, potholes, etc is MUCH less impactful b/c of the lower tire pressure. I think I may like this! I should also say that I decided to pump the back wheel up to 105 psi and the front to 100 psi. The reason being that the tire manufacturer recommends 100 minimum and 116 max. I may adjust downard as time goes on... I'll have to experiment. Many people ride road tubless at less than 100 psi (as low as 70). The risk of pinch flats is apparently low or non-existent since there's no tube.
Maybe I'll post something later after I put some miles on these wheels. Let me know if you have any questions.
Enrique
I also found this blog very helpful before I decided to dive in and convert my wheels. I'm now also finding useful info about ongoing maintenance (not much to do actually except add more sealant periodically) of the tires and troubleshooting, patching larger holes, etc. Good info...
http://roadtubeless.blogspot.com
I went out for my first ride outdoors. I did a 56 mile race rehearsal. It's very interesting how this went. Here are some initial observations. First of all, I ran on 90 psi on the front wheel and 95 psi on rear. The ride was super smooth compared to before (with tubes). I did the same route that I've done many, many times before and the road was just flat out smoother. That was nice.
As I was riding, I was trying to not avoid debris on the road like I normally would. The route I take has some small pebbles and occasional small bits of auto glass on the shoulder. I normally try to avoid that as much as I can. This time I didn't take as much care and often rode through that stuff. At one point, at around mile 30, I actually sprung a leak. The front tire started hissing and my initial reaction was to slow down and stop. Right when I stopped, I heard a THLERP! sound and the hissing stopped. I checked the tire quickly to make sure it had some pressure and see if I could locate where the hole had been, but couldn't see anything..... The tire pressure seemed good enough to continue so I did. I finished the rest of the 56 miles uneventfully.
So far so good....