[Closed] Am I the only Luddite still using tubes on MTB's ?

Tubeless for the last 4 years, got fed up providing the midges with a free meal. Not had a "normal" puncture since though I did get an almighty slash in the sidewalls twice that turned me into bug fodder again. I've found that Maxxis are easy to fit whilst Contis make for a good workout. Both are fine once on and sealed.

I still ride with tubes on my Foxy R. Tyres are Conti Mountain King and l run them at 25psi.
Not had a puncture for months. My friend runs tubeless on his Kona, and he's had to walk home twice with punctures that didn't seal. Then we found that the sealant had dried out but we couldn't get the tyre off, so had to take it to tbe LBS.
They sorted it but when the sealant needed to be changed again we got the tyre off OK but then it wouldn't seal.

I'm a serial tyre swopper so no I haven't changed to tubeless yet. Never found a tyre combo yet that I'm happy with all year round.

Tubeless on all my bikes running Stans & Halo rims, have been for the last 3-4 years with only 1 puncture last year. On our recent night ride out of 15 riders the only one who got a flat (twice) was riding tubes, it was on a trail where they had cut the hedges.
At the end of the year we have an awards dinner and one of the prizes is a tubeless kit for the guy who is still riding in Black and White and got the most punctures 🙂

I had a stack of 26" tyres and maybe 50 tubes I rotated, fixing punctures. Made the leap to 29er 2 years ago, fitted tubeless shortly after that, haven't had a problem yet. Chose a nice mid range tyre. (top end Hans dampf). Fit and forget.

I'll go tubeless when it works properly, ta.

It does work properly! I've been tubeless for four years now and won't go back to tubes because I think the bike feels better tubeless. I had to pop a tube in the back of my Demo recently and it felt awful; dead and sluggish. It feels so much better tubeless. Tubeless transformed my old SX Trail raft I used as a trail bike.

I don't get the faf factor either; my tyres all go up with ease and hold air fine. Conti tyres were a bit squiffy, but everything else has been fine including my nobe tubeless Minion DH tyres on the Demo.

 

Haven't read the whole thread so sorry if I'm repeating others..

Iaian, I converted 5 years ago for all of my bikes (except my road bike) including the wifes. I had my first puncture that didn't seal itself about a month ago... in 5 years!

When I pulled the tyre off there was in excess of 20 thorns in it that had sealed never causing a puncture. The only reason it didn't seal that time was I hadn't topped the fluid up in 6 months.

It is literally in my opinion the best advancement in mtbs in the last 15 years along with dropper posts.

Punctures in the cold dark and wet are just no fun, so much so that the club I ride with every Tuesday night has pretty much banned people from riding with us if they are running tubes. Often in excess of 20 people out and we've had 2 punctures that I can recall across the whole group all winter. 1 of those was a guy who's bike had come tubeless ready and he didn't realise it had tubes in lol.

If you have proper tubeless rims and tyres then just pull the core out of the tubeless valve and use a compressor and they'll generally go straight up unless your tyre is really baggy.

Also helps with one of life's joys. Cold winter night rides without a pack, or indeed any spares. Or even a water bottle.

Danger rides - brilliant!.

Also helps with one of life's joys. Cold winter night rides without a pack, or indeed any spares. Or even a water bottle.

Just started doing this myself, very liberating!

Tubeless on everything except my commuter, which I might convert

In 8 years of running tubeless I've had 3 "flats" It happens so infrequently I can remember them pretty well.

Tore a tyre at Innerleithen (it was a stupidly light Specialized Ground Control and i was riding like a fanny over a rock section)

Tore a tyre at Fort William (it was a Nobby Nic and i was riding like a fanny over a rocky section)

Unseated a tyre at Carron Valley (It was an Ardent and I was riding like a fanny on a 29er hardtail using a tubeless set up i knew was suspect as I'd mangled the rimstrip changing tyres).

Punctures are so infrequent that on short rides I don't even bother carrying a tube. I go out with a mobile phone and a water bottle.

It's really not that big a hassle to set up. I'm not a serial tyre changer but I do run "Summer Tyres" about 4 days a year or change to faster rubber for a race and its not really any harder than changing any other tyre

I can't see a downside to tubeless

60-70 miles off road every week one maybe two punctures/year

If tubes were a problem I'd do something about it and maybe if UST had caught on I would've changed

rich - you certainly do seem to ride like a fanny a fair bit.... !

I kinda new that anyway tho... 🙂

Think will put a Nobby Nic on rear and then get them setup, nobeer may even show me what to do in exchange for cakes 🙂

i keep trying to get tubeless to work for me, but it just doesn't*.

so i use innertubes, and accept that i'll get 1 or 2 punctures a year.

(*right now, my hardtail is officially tubeless, which means that neither of the tyres are inflated when i look at them in the morning, which means either a 10minute faff, or justing using the FS, which has innertubes)

i accept that i'm doing something wrong, and that highlights my biggest criticism of tubeless: it needs to be be idiot-proof, it isn't.

With not a great deal of riding over the last 5 months, I have still managed to have 3 unsealable punctures in tubeless tyres 😕 What an absolute arse that is out on the trail - prob just gonna stick with tubeless on the fully tubeless wheels and tubed on the others - so 50% luddite

Bizarrely I've settled with tubes on the back, tubeless on the front. 100kg rider and skinny tyres felt too soft on the back. Rarely get punctures anyway.

Still no one has mentioned slime tubes? I've been using them for ages without a problem, when I changed a tyre the other day there were 8 thorns in one tyre but the slime had stopped any punctures. "the internet" says slime tubes are rubbish but nobody says why, they work great in my limited experience.

rich - you certainly do seem to ride like a fanny a fair bit.... !

Tis true...

Point being, tubeless is really reliable if you aren't using daft tyres or a duff setup.

I ride like a fanny all the time and have only had those three issues!

And puncture protection is a bonus the real reason for tubeless is how much nicer it feels on the bike.

I changed to tubeless about 4 years ago. Never had a puncture since. I honestly can not think of any good reason why anyone would not run tubeless. Its a breeze.

It does make changing tyres for conditions more difficult. But I just don't bother any more. I've found that the 29er gives me more grip, and lower pressures with tubeless also do, so I've been using butcher/purgatory combo for basically everything. I put the skinny racy smooth tyres on last spring for the chalk downs, but I probably didn't need to. I want to get two sets of wheels to make it easy to chop and change.

rich - just sent to a FB message

It does make changing tyres for conditions more difficult.

It really doesn't.

Pop one bead off, place rag inside tyre and wipe all around. Pop other bead off, give rim another quick wipe, fit new tyre, bang it up with pop bottle/airshot/flash charger.

And then when you've got the replaced tyre off, you can go round the inside and pull out all the thorns and glass shards that would've punctured your archaic inner tube...

Tubeless on everything...[p]unctures are so infrequent that on short rides I don't even bother carrying a tube.

Yup, I've had to stop a couple of times and give one of my spare tubes to people who also do that...

I've had the sealant, valves and gorilla tape in the box for over a year now, keep meaning to get round to trying it on the rear wheel. But then, I remember this:
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how often do you need to top up the stans fluid, typically ?

Genuine question - if you run tubeless successfully as above then have an unlucky incident resulting in your tyre going down - how can you use a tube as a short term get-you-home option if the inside of the tyre's like a porcupine (also as above)?

in our lovely climate every six months is plenty.

When I swap from winter to summer tyres there is generally still wet sealant inside the tyre

Still on tubes here. Punctures have never been that common for me, even when I was getting out much more than I am now.

Tubeless sounds interesting but I'm not going to get a new set of wheels just to give it a go. I've browsed a few threads about ghetto approaches that make me think it's a lot of faff given that I'm not really seeing a problem with tubes at the moment.

My current tyres are tubeless ready, so if I found myself needing to replace both wheels at once (unlikely given the current state of my riding!) maybe I'd give it a go then.

Been tubeless on the FS bike for 3 or 4 years now, but recently went back to tubes on the rear due to a ding on the rim. I never thought it was a night and day difference when I went tubeless, and now I've gone back I still don't think it's the revelation some people claim it is. That said, I will eventually go tubeless again because I hate fixing punctures, no matter how infrequent.

Forgot to say in my last post that (like some others it seems) lower pressures for me are currently associated with nasty squirming and banging the rim, so I'm not really sold on that side of it either. I'm happy to accept it might be different somehow on tubeless, but at the moment I've no real incentive to try it unless it's effectively going to be 'free'.

Haven't yet found the tyre to rule all tyres so won't go tubeless yet. More of a revelation for me has been EXO, Snakeskin etc. Any extra weight no issue in the context of fewer punctures.

Forgot to say in my last post that (like some others it seems) lower pressures for me are currently associated with nasty squirming and banging the rim, so I'm not really sold on that side of it either

I can still go a good deal lower than I used to without squirm. I used to run 40psi, now can get away with 25 or 30.

Tubeless sounds interesting but I'm not going to get a new set of wheels just to give it a go.

You almost certainly don't need to. Stan's rim strips worked very well for me on non-tubeless rims, which is in no way ghetto. What rims do you have?

I resisted for years but converted last year and now wonder why I waited - local hedge cutters and the genius who thought a hawthorn hedge next to a local bike path would be a good idea meant I was getting multiple problems every weekend. I even had to walk home after trashing two sets of tubes with multiple punctures. No punctures at all last year and running 22-24psi despite my 90kg! It was much easier than I thought and now doen sons bike with Stans conversion kit which was dead easy also.

No punctures at all last year and running 22-24psi despite my 90kg

What tyre/rim combo?

I think I will give it a go on my new wheels. Other bike has TL Nobby Nics's on XM719's - what would I need to setup those ones ?

All you need on any wheel is rim strip and sealant. Get some CO2, so that if pumping like hell on the track pump doesn't work, the CO2 will.

I would not personally go with the tape only method, it just complicates matters. Stan's sealant is the best cos it has micro particles in it.

This is all you need: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/stans-no-tubes-standard-tubeless-kit/rp-prod38835

Stans or Joes rim strips is the easiest way.

My three tubeless set ups are

XT UST Rims
Mavic XC717 rims with Stans rimstrips
Mavic XM319 rims with Joes rimstrips

Aye, the kit Molly links to up there is what you need. I wouldn't bother with the C02 (there's some think that it doesn't react well with the sealant) as I'll come armed with an inflator...

I used CO2 for years. Didn't need it on Stan's rims with their rim strip, don't need it with Bonty TLR rims/strips and Spesh tyres, but did with some other combos before TLR was a thing.

You almost certainly don't need to. Stan's rim strips worked very well for me on non-tubeless rims, which is in no way ghetto. What rims do you have?

I've got a Butcher control which has been no bother but the Purgatory control constantly wept sealant. I just got rid as I didn't rate it anyway. When I've had problems inflating I've left the wheel horizontal on top of a bucket for a while, do it for both sides then have another go at pumping them up.

Interesting point about rim width and squirming.

I do think some folk are more sensitive to this and / or prefer different compromises to others.

I've been riding with folk and seen their tyre virtually collapsing under their weight ie deformed half way to the rim but they seem happy enough with it

Another aspect is that I was completely unconvinced about the idea that it makes the tyre grippier / more conforming without a tube but even I could feel a difference when I went tubeless at the same pressures I rode with with tubes

molgrips - What tyre/rim combo?

On Stans Flow from 2015 so 25.5 internal width and running Ardent 2.4 Exo 3C on the hardtail. Tyres are a revelation - I bought them for summer and then have been too lazy to change, though they have coped with everything barring sticky clay/mud. Went up with a track pump and no sealant initially and took 3 days to lose pressure!
On FS running bit more in a Minion DHR2 as it is quite a bit smaller - around 27psi rear and trying out a vigilante front at 24psi on WTB i23 rim. So far seem good without any squirm or burping.

 

Can't be arsed to go tubless I change tires so often i think it would be a right PITA but then I still got rim brakes on one of my bikes so a right luddite