[Closed] Dual Ply vs Single Ply Tubeless for pinch prevention

Tubeless will carry a greater risk of dinging the rim. Dual ply will be heavy. Question is, what's the better tradeoff?

Only if you run lower pressures.

Tried Tubeless for a while the temptation was to run lower pressure and this resulted in lots of damaged rims. not worth the bother and extra expense - I trust a lot will disagree here.

Now it's Dual ply on the Back, single ply on the front, might slow you down a bit on the climbs but save you a load of down time fixing punchers and getting cold in the winter. !

It depends where you ride but in the Lakes its dual ply all the way.

wider rims?

or learn to ride light

Why not run tubeless at the same pressure as single-ply? If the latter is merely pinch-flatting but not dinging rims, then tubeless will stop the pinch-flats and have no effect on the rims.

Unless I rode badly Single ply Maxxis was fine in the lakes on the full suss, HT could go either way.

Have a look at the EXO sidewall versions which is probably the halfway you are looking for.

What pressures do you run? I used to be 35psi.

I'm now tubeless but I still run them fairly firm as I don't like a tyre that moves under me that much and I have enough grip.

Something with protection sidewalls, or LUST - still lighter than double-ply. I was pleased with Schwalbe Hans Dampf 2.35 in Molini which is rough as hell. No punctures in a week of [s]thrashing[/s] mincing.

Or stop riding like an elephant 😉

Just tried a pair of schwable hans dampf after taking the sidewall out of a single ply minion. Really though for a single ply tyre, run tubeless is easy. I would not run minions under 30psi due to burping out air, and squirming under hard cornering. Had the hans damps down to 25psi and they still maybe too firm. The grip is better than the minions in trial star compound too.

Tubeless really does open you up to user error and running too low pressures, I've done it myself, it's a "just because you can doesn't mean you should" sort of situation. These days I use the exact same pressures with tubes or tubeless.

2 ply will protect better but if you want 1 ply just pump them up harder

Tom KP

Specialized clutch sx are 1.5 ply and good middle ground, never had a flat with them, even on rocky DH tracks.

Assuming your rims are wide enough to avoid cornering squirm, then larger volume tyres will be more pinch/ding resistant at sensible pressures. And Protection/Exo/Snakeskin/Armadillo/UST/etc are all a halfway house between typical single ply and dual ply in carcass stiffness.

How wide are your rims 😕 Conti ust tyres - well worth the price tag

Ran minion and HR combo single ply for years with no flats. 30 psi. 2.35 tyres. Any old cheap tubes but correct size for the tyres. Bearing in mind I'm 10.5 st roughly.

I've gone tubeless now and currently ruining 25psi. Was running a littler lower which is a very nice grippy feel but I need to put more sealant in as it was leaking. That's the same tyres which are unofficially tubeless ready and running on tubeless rims.

OP, just what sort of pressure are you using then ?

I used to pinch a lot and though I went tubeless I've ended up putting tubes in again (had 'burps' and never got round to resealing etc) - never really pinch now and I think it's mostly due to being a better rider. I used to throw my weight back all the time and was always getting pinches on the back.

On that note, rear braking through rock gardens exacerbates rear pinch flats. Thing got better for me after some coaching taught me correct use of brakes ! I'd been doing it wrong for years!

Yeah that could be a big factor for me too actually.

Non-UST dual ply run tubeless works for me on the back of the big bike in the Peaks.

A 2.3 TP Highroller is only a hair heavier than a single ply + a decent tube, and so far seems utterly bombproof. The rim (a Flow) has picked up plenty of dinks, but it's never flatted or burped.

LUST on the front

What pressures do I run? Currently around 30 (I think - actually waiting delivery on a better gauge that can handle presta valves! ). And that's still a bit high for my liking. I'd like to go lower not for grip but to soak up the trail chatter.

I was thinking wider tyres should be more pinch resistant, as the tyre starts to deform the footprint should elongate more slowly as more area contacts the ground per inch of footprint length, right? But by the same token won't they be worse at absorbing the trail chatter (at whatever the right psi is?)

I think i'm averaging one or two pinch flats a year* running single ply HRs on the DH bike - almost all at the rear. I never go any lower than 30-ish though. I had a bad spell of three in the space of a week, but have gone over a year without any. I'm happy with those stats and don't see the need to change. If it was more of a problem i'd try dual ply before going down the tubeless route.

The hardtail doesn't suffer at all and I'd put it down to line choice mainly and a bit of luck.
[i]
* This bike maybe gets ridden about 20 times a year which probably isn't that much. However, some the trails it goes down are very 'full on' and i'm constantly amazed a bike will get to the bottom without breaking. Bloody great things these mountain bikes.[/i] 😀

I was thinking wider tyres should be more pinch resistant

there is a happy ratio between tyre width and rim width. go too high and you will get more pinch flats.

Dont use tyre pressure to soak up trail chatter (this is causing pinch flats).

Use your suspension to do that.

Most people get a pinch or two a year, not as many as you.

Bagstard
Specialized clutch sx are 1.5 ply and good middle ground, never had a flat with them, even on rocky DH tracks.

I thought that until I went to Antur Stiniog with my Butcher SX up front and a Clutch SX on the rear and had 3 pinches in 4 runs. I'm a slow learner, they were all at the same place.

But this:

buzz-lightyear
On that note, rear braking through rock gardens exacerbates rear pinch flats.

makes sense and is probably what I was doing 😳

Wider tyres aren't just wider, they're taller too. The Rubber Queen 2.2 I'm using are so tall the bike is much closer to a 27.5 than 26 - that's a lot of extra space between outer carcass and rim. And being UST run tubeless the carcass is tougher than normal single ply and there's no tube to pinch. Add in the joy of the RQ's particular black chili compound in the wet and you have an ideal tyre for hitting rocks hard in damp places - apart from the price...

The last time I had a pinch flat I was running tubes on lighter smaller tyres and using my rear brake down a fast rocky trail - nowadays I do my best to never brake on the rough bits, I try to use the smoother grippier patches to control my speed and then let the bike roll as gravity intends over the gnarly bits.

Trimix I don't know what suspension you have but my 120mm rebas + fox rlc don't seem remotely capable of absorbing chatter as fast as what I'm wanting the tyres to handle.

It's difficult to get consensus on these kind of threads isn't it, without knowing the individual riders and trails from which the opinions come..! Most people I know in person who would advise pumping the tyres up more, either don't ride as fast, or I haven't seen them ride anywhere I'd really call rocky. But on the other hand quite possibly there is a skill issue in my case because that advice about not braking on rocks was new to me.

Dartmoor has given me 5 pinches in only 2 rides - often not at a very high speed either - and often with high pressures 35psi+. I think it's the very sharp granite edges that do it, I've rarely seen anything like it on a manufactured trail, even downhill.

In the Peak I recently pinched on Jacob's Ladder (running thin tubes 32psi maybe) but not the Beast (running dh tube in the rear with pressures probably 25/30 front/rear) nor at Glyncorrwg with the same setup, even though some think the trails there as quite rocky. I've only ridden in the Lakes a couple of times but not pinched at all there.

Hmm maybe all things considered the thing to do would be inspect the rims and decide how badly I'm dinging them - that might help decide one way or the other.

Don't like to blow my own trumpet bit I ride descents in the Lakes reasonably quick (on a Pitch with 160mm forks), and I weigh 16.5 stone. Used to run really low pressures for grip but lately I've been less bothered when especially the back wheel slides about a bit at higher pressures.

Dual Ply tyres have side walls with four layers, thus preventing pinch flats. Tyre width doesn't have much to do with it. And dual ply will allow you to run lower pressures, but not ridiculously low, shouldn't need to run any less than 28psi. And tyres have damping ability which works with your suspension, so yes, do use them to soak up chatter (to an extent).

Well, Ive got massive Fox Talas 36 160mm forks and a CCDB on the rear of my Transition Covert. My idea of trail chatter is probably like riding down a set of stairs 🙂

However, I still think your tyre pressures are too low and its the low pressure thats allowing pinch flats.

So, put more air in and put up with the way it feels, or change your grips and fiddle with your forks (lighter oil, less com/reb/preload).

Dont you find your tyres squirming about with that little air in them ?

I rode in the Alps over the summer, DH stuff, with 35-40 psi using the tyres you have, single ply, never got a puncture. There were rocks there. It was black and red runs.

I dont think its speed so much, more how you hit the rocks and the weighing/unweighting as well as pressure.

Also, check your pressure gauge. I had one that was at least 10-15 psi different from the new one I bought. Not sure which one was correct.

Your idea of 30 psi may be way off.

Just to throw in another recommend for the middle grounds, stuff like Maxxis Exos, or the Specialized SXs. Running tubeless in the SXs (they're not advertised as 2bliss but work as well as any tubeless ready tyre I've used) I've never managed to burp or pinch, even doing a load of fort william runs with the pressures wrong (lots of dents, no pinches, every time I got to the start of a race run I thought "Inflate your damn tyre" and every time I got to the bottom I thought "Quick, get back to the top!")

Won't protect you from too-low pressures but has a lot more margin for error. Only downside is that they're a less tacky tyre than their downhill versions, for full on dh I'd prefer the compound of the DH models.

Oh yeah, Schwalbe have their version on the way too, something with reinforced sidewalls but thinner grip faces. Looks good.

Trimix thank you for the details. I don't think it's the presence of rocks so much as their shape 🙂 As to tyres squirming, the old intense dh tyres I used didn't seem to squirm even at silly low pressures (prob 20 or less). Haven't quite figured out what minion does in that respect yet.

Northwind - looking at Schwalbe's website I can't even figure out which of their tyres are single and dual ply, nevermind the middle ground. Am I missing something?

Well, you could move to the Chilterns then. Not many rocks down here. Lots of mud at the moment where you low pressures may help.

I run the same pressure tubeless as I used to with tubes - tyres naturally feel more compliant due to not having two opposing surfaces "dragging" on each other.

Do it!

sideshow - Member

Northwind - looking at Schwalbe's website I can't even figure out which of their tyres are single and dual ply, nevermind the middle ground. Am I missing something?

Nope, they are incredibly confusing. New carcass is called Super Gravity, first tyres supposed to be along early 2013- Hans Dampf probably first.

Northwind - looking at Schwalbe's website I can't even figure out which of their tyres are single and dual ply, nevermind the middle ground. Am I missing something?

Pretty sure it is as follows:

Evo - Lightweight XC carcass
Snakskin - More durable XC carcass
Freeride - Thicker single ply
Downhill - Double ply

I reckon if you care more about descending than ascending then go for a dual ply tyre. If you care about weight go for a single ply and up the pressure. Or, if you want a descent tyre just bye some Schwalbe Hans Dampf Trailstars (folding) and away you go! 🙂

Update on hans damps trailstar 2.35. I decided they are too draggy for me front and rear. Just tried to remove tyre from cross ax sx rear wheel. Half hour later and resorted to professional car tyre lever to brake the bead seal. I think you could run them flat and not have them come off the rim. Might not be amusing trying to fit a tube on a wet winter night if you do puncture.

i would advise single for normal use
and dual only for the hardest of riding available.

I have recently switched from Single Ply high Rollers 60a at 30psi to intense invader 50a dual ply and wow, what a difference! Not only is the tread pattern better all over, but the sidewalls and general feel of the tyre is so tough I'm not in the least bit worried about flats or pinches at 25psi. The compound obviously does grip better and the lower pressure gives noticeably better traction. They are also a better general mud tyre than the high rollers which is pretty relevant for Scotland/UK.

They are mega heavy and quite draggy though, pushing my Trek Remedy up to 35lbs but I'm not bothered about that. I'm riding for the downs these days not the ups.