Originally Posted by
tetonrider
you're not alone. there's pretty high side-force on tires in cross. either you run low pressure and deal with lots of burping which is scary and possibly dangerous or you run higher pressure and lose the associated benefit.
low volume and low pressure is not a great combo for tubeless, IMO.
(i say this as an owner of a set of tubeless wheels i ride with 38-40c tires. the setup is fine for training & gravel riding but doesn't compare to tubulars for cross.)
Honestly I found tubeless worked quite well for cross. You need to have a good tire/rim combo, but these days there are lots of those. I was able to run Specialized Terras below 19 PSI on Pacenti SL23 V2 rims and it was fine. My problems with tubeless have been more long-term maintenance of pressure. Burping and in-race reliability wasn't an issue for me. I ran a tubeless front tire for most of the season after I got sick of replacing flatted Clement MXPs in late September.
That said, tubeless isn't a full replacement for tubulars. You can still run lower pressures and get a better ride and traction with tubulars, so instead of using tubeless as a backup, like I did last year, I got another set of tubular wheels. So now I have an all-rounder/dry conditions wheel/tire set and an all-rounder/mud conditions wheel/tire set. Pretty exciting.