The closest I've come to riding tubeless on a Classic and Vintage bike is with my '97 lugged steel Pinarello. In my mind, it's not old enough to be vintage, but I think it's a classic.

I've run Stan's Notubes in mountain bike tires for over ten years, nearly as long as Stan has been in the tubeless business. When I got a new carbon fiber road bike last Fall, I thought I would go ahead and try road tubeless. I built some very nice, light wheels, using Stan's Notubes Alpha 340 rims, American Classic hubs, and DT Aerolite spokes. The Alpha 340 rims are shaped in such a way that makes them ideal for road tubeless. The tubeless tire, when mounted, has a slightly rounder, higher volume shape when it's on these rims. The rims do have conventional spoke holes, so it's important to use a couple of layers of Stan's Notubes rim tape. The tape is a very thin plastic, and it's very sticky on one side. With two layers of it in the road rim, it will withstand the high pressures of a road tire and will seal off the spoke holes.

I didn't know this when I first started working with road tubeless, but pretty much any double walled clincher road rim can be set up tubeless. You set them up just like I described above, by using Stan's yellow rim tape in the appropriate width. The key is that you have to use one of the road-tubeless-specific tires on the market (which is also true when using "tubeless ready" road rims). The downside is that, and it will depend on the specific rim how much this will matter, a tubeless road tire mounted on a standard (non-tubeless) road rim will typically not give you the nice round, higher volume shape that it will have when mounted on a tubeless-ready road rim.

So here's my ride report. With the Alpha 340's on the carbon bike, I've put in quite a lot of miles, and have absolutely loved the road tubeless setup. I've used the Hutchinson Atom tubeless tires on this bike, and have worn one pair of these tires out and have installed a second pair. I have about 4000 miles on the bike with this setup. The ride quality is excellent, as one would hope. I run less pressure with road tubeless than I do with tubes; I'm running about 105 psi on the rear tire and about 100 psi in the front, where with tubes I would run about 115psi rear and 110 psi front. The mounted tires, on the Alpha 340 rims, measure exactly 23mm with a nice round shape. Keep in mind, I have always run Stan's Notubes sealant in my tubeless tires. Tubeless without sealant makes very little sense to me, as that would take away one of the big advantages of tubeless. The sealant works. In the 4000 + miles I've ridden on road tubeless, I've not had a flat yet. I feel like I'd have to really tear a good sized gash in the tire to get a flat. I do carry a tube and material for a tire boot, just in case.

On the Pinarello, I sometimes ride with a Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheelset installed. These, of course, are very modern wheels, and they do not have spoke holes; the unconventional spoke nipples are threaded into one rim wall, and so no spoke holes are needed. As I became more familiar with road tubeless, I realized that this wheelset might be an ideal candidate to set up tubeless. So I got some road tubeless tires, and without any rim tape (again, no spoke holes on these rims), installed them with the normal dose of Stan's sealant. Everything worked great, and I rode with them at a slightly lower pressure than normal, resulting in good ride quality when combined with the very high quality tires. However, the mounted tires only measure about 20- 21mm, as I used the same Hutchinson Atom tubeless tires as I used on the other bike. These particular tires are the lightest of all the road tubeless tires available, so they probably are a little narrower than the other tubeless tires on the market. I never had a flat with this setup, as expected. But I don't know, I wasn't crazy about the narrowness of the tires, and there are other tires I like better on this bike. So after a few hundred miles, I went back to tubes on this bike (actually, it was when I wore out the first pair of Atoms on the carbon bike and needed new tires that I moved these tires over to that bike). I simply wasn't as impressed with this setup as I am with the tubeless-ready rims.

I should add that I own a bike shop, we are a Stan's Notubes dealer, and we sell and set up A LOT of tubeless wheels/tires, both road and mountain. For the most part, people love it. The downside is that a lot of people never really learn how to install a tubeless tire themselves, install the sealant, etc, and so the whole thing remains a bit of a mystery to them even if we have set it up for them and they ride extensively on it. I don't think that's a good thing; I think you ought to be able to install whatever tires you're using yourself, and have complete confidence in your ability to do it and understand it.

Hope this helps-