Sealant Problems - It won't dry

Which sealant? I had that trouble with Muc Off and went back to Stans which I've never had trouble with. Muc Off never seemed to dry it just stayed like a natural yogurt consistency.

Milkit

Ah, never used it but it is designed not to dry so that'll be why most likely.

But then when it sprayed all over the bike the other day it dried and took me an age to clean off

What tyres are you using? That’s a lot of punctures… the sealant doesn’t work by “drying up”. The particles in the liquid plug the hole. Any sealant on the outside of the tyre will dry up, get washed off.

Muc Offs absolute gash. Great that it doesn't smell like a bum hole pub urinal but the cost is you'll never remove it from a frame if left to dry!

Did you shake the sealant bottle before adding? As otherwise it settles & you end up just adding the carrier liquid! (Never used that one though, only Stans)

There is no problem with your sealant.

I have been very happy with Muc Off so far this year despite the bad press. Has sealed everything so far but perhaps I have been lucky.

Is it just bad luck that you've had these two punctures in a row, or have you had to plug a lot in the past as well?

Tougher tyres may be the solution? (or a rear one at least: were they rear or front puctures?)

I think I've only had to plug two punctures in the past 5 or 6 years or so. I had one other puncture that took a long time to seal, and one other that wrote the tyre off (a massive metal shard in the road that would have killed almost anything)

I've just brought a bottle of Stan's Race which I've used for years, but this bottle seems full of gravel lumps of Stan's balls which make a right racket in the wheel. I've never had this before. I had to take the tyre of and crush the balls to shut them up. Anyone else had this? Seems weird.

I accidentally bought stans race. Just
it’s crazy stuff. Huge lumps of stuff in it. Plugged everything it touched. Only when I checked the label did I realise what was going on.

The balls do make a noise at first, seems to go away later. It's great stuff though, but you can't use a syringe to add it, because it blocks the nozzle!

The tyres are on my road bike and are gp5000 so not low end tyres at all. They cuts weren't small but the plugs just don't seem to hold. I wondered if I had too much pressure, was running about 85psi but I wouldn't go much lower.

I really want the system to work but the problem is that I have lost confidence in it

I'm using the new version of Peaty's holeshot sealant. It doesn't seem to dry but does seem to seal well. I'm only going on a maxxis tyre that bleeds through the walls rather than a proper puncture. It also sealed the valve hole very well when I went to top up!

Stan’s race on GP5000s works fine for me. Almost 30000km and not a single puncture that didn’t seal itself after a few air top ups.

I’ve now ran several of these tyres down to the canvas without problems.

Ah, I didn't realise you were running road tyres

I've never ran tubeless tyres at more than about 40-45 psi (32mm's) and I don't think I'd want to run any higher psi than that given all I've read about people struggling to get even small punctures to seal under high pressure

The tyres are on my road bike and are gp5000 so not low end tyres at all. They cuts weren’t small but the plugs just don’t seem to hold. I wondered if I had too much pressure, was running about 85psi but I wouldn’t go much lower.

Stans has worked brilliantly for me in MTB tyres, but it just wouldn't seal in road ones.

Orange sealant did work well, however.

Do you think that's the trick to look at other sealants before giving up?

Someone I know spoke really highly of the orange sealant.

If you're keen, then I'd suggest having another go with some sealant that's got a decent reputation for road tyres (as I said, the Orange Sealant worked for me at road pressures).

I don't think that the whole tubeless thing is the 'game changer' for road bikes that it was for MTB, but it can be made to work.
(YMMV!)

The tyres are on my road bike and are gp5000 so not low end tyres at all. They cuts weren’t small but the plugs just don’t seem to hold. I wondered if I had too much pressure, was running about 85psi but I wouldn’t go much lower.

What size tyres are they? (And how much do you weigh!) 85psi could be a massively high pressure, or quite normal.
I'm around 90 kilos and using 28s (that measure up at 30mm on my rims) and i'm running between 60 and 70, and experimenting with lower (50 is too low).
TBH, anything below 25mm or over ~80PSI i've just found to not be worth the hassle unless you are a magnet for punctures in tubed tyres. High quality tubes and tyres is as good as anything tubeless.

For reference, when I was running 32mm tyres I was only running 45psi for road and light gravel -- and I weigh 75-77kg

I never got many punctures at all. I weight about 85kg and perhaps you are right that lower pressures might be the way to go.