Digitalfiend

The bike came from the dealer with Stan's in the tires and after I removed my first set of Atoms (due to wear) I found a serious amount of corrosion, which shouldn't really happen to anodized aluminum. Went online and found I wasn't alone. I switched to Caffeelatex after discovering that.

I put the sealant in around February...but come to think of it...I rode these wheels on my old bike in March when it was still cold out (-10c ambient.) I wonder if that did something to the sealant. I'd have to check the bottle to see what the minimum temp is. Just pulled the tire off and it is clear the sealant was working at some point as it sealed the tiny gaps along the bead/tire interface, valve, etc. Damn, totally forgot that I rode these wheels in the winter.

Honestly, I'm sort of tempted to abandon the whole tubeless tire thing. Cleaning up the rim is a PIA and getting the Atoms on these rims is not fun. I can put on a GP4k in about 5 minutes - a single Atom took me almost an hour! Granted my basement was cold in February so the rubber might have been a bit stiffer but my hands felt destroyed the next day.

The only real appreciable advantage I can see to tubeless is that the tire seems less likely to come off the wheel in a blow out due to the tight fit/bead and dried sealant along the bead. I'm 180 lbs at the moment and the tire didn't even pull away from the edge of the wheel when it blew and deflated. Then again, perhaps normal clinchers behave the same way - as I said, I was puncture free until today so my experience here is limited. Being able to run a bit less air pressure hasn't really made that much of a difference for me either and I still typically find myself going back to 95-100psi.