Tubeless Road Tires Work!
by Rob Blue on August 15th, 2008
So the buzz about tubeless road tires continues to gather steam with the announcement that Campagnolo is entering the fray by offering tubeless compatible road wheels both under the Campagnolo name and their Fulcrum brand as well. As a huge fan of running my MTB tires tubeless I have been following the news closely since I believe that tubeless road tires will eventually become the standard.
Of course, waiting is the hard part. I hate waiting. I want the cool stuff now. But when your neck is on the line, like when your bombing down a crazy mountain road, paved of course, we are talking road bikes here, you don’t want to be the guinea pig for new technology. My teammate Travis can tell you all about that.
Back at last year Interbike our buddy Mike at Stan’s NoTubes told me they were experimenting with running road tubeless on Mavic road wheels. The Mavic wheels seem like a perfect choice when you consider that they have no spoke holes that go through the rim. They should be close to airtight right from the get go and with little Stan’s sealant, completely airtight. The problem in the past had been that regular road tires just blow right off the rim. Not good (Travis knows this first hand).
I dropped the idea until I recently saw a article by bike guru Leonard Zinn, who said that when combined with Hutchinson’s road tubeless specific tires and some Stan’s tubeless valve stems and sealant, the Mavic wheels do indeed work. And according to Mr. Zinn, they work really well. Off to Helen’s I went to get some Hutchinson tires!
So first I stripped off my Kenda tires and tubes and installed the Stan’s tubeless valve stems. Then I had to work my ass off the get those Hutchinson’s onto the rims. No wonder they work so well, there is no way they are going to blow off the rims, I could barely get them on! Then came the sealant that I squirted in by removing the valve cores. The real trick turned out to be getting these suckers inflated. A floor pump won’t do it, you need an air compressor. Fortunately I have an air compressor but the drag turned out to be that I recently bought a new air chuck and it is a piece of shit! It wouldn’t flow any air without dutching on an angle a bit. It took forever to get it just right but I did eventually inflate both tires. I was pissed though because now it was dark out and I would have to wait until tomorrow to give them a proper test ride.
The next morning was test number one, did the tires hold air overnight? Yes they did, no pressure loss at all. Things were looking good. Now off on the first ride which will include one descent to see how they feel going downhill fast.
Well, wow! They seemed to be working great and the ride was silky smooth. Part of this smoothness is that with a tubeless setup you run your tire pressure around 85-90 psi. Supposedly you have less rolling resistance and better grip just like on a MTB setup and from what I was feeling that seemed spot on. They definitely felt smoother than my carbon tubulars and those were on the top of my list.
The true test, the 40+ MPH long downhill run came and went without a problem. No drama at all. The tires hooked up just like tubulars or good clinchers. And they stayed on the rims!
I now have a couple hundred miles on them over all kinds of roads. Nice pavement, bad pavement, climbs and descents the tubeless setup has worked like a charm. I don’t know if they are any faster, from what I read constantly there is data from every camp claiming some advantage or another. For me, the big draw is a smooth ride and a reduced chance of flats. With a bit of sealant in there I should be good to go unless I space and roll over some really nasty stuff on the road. Just as with the MTB tubeless setups, in the worst case, you can always throw a tube in there to get you back home. In 3 years of riding MTB tubeless I’ve only had to do that once with a cut sidewall out in Nevada (nasty rocks out there). I’m hoping the same luck carries through on the road side of things. I will enjoy the new smooth ride something changes but it’s looking really good right now for the future of riding tubeless on the road.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Dude that is bad ass, I cant wait to do that on my old Lemond, then my tires with be worth more than my bike. Ha ha oh well it rolls solid still for a 1995.