Originally Posted by
Dave Mayer
Nope. The reason why tubulars are almost impenetrable to pinch flats is due to the rim profile. Look at a tubular rim from the front: it has rounded profile. No sharp edges. The clincher rim has two hooks that are (obviously) required to hold on the clincher tire bead. These hooks are sharp, hence the pinch flats. In addition, these hooks add weight at the worst possible place on a bike (rotating mass at extremities) and they are fragile.
Listen: the entire problem with clincher wheels comes down to these rim hooks. The extra weight, the fragility, the pinch flats, and blowout safety issues. If you could get rid of the hooks, you'd have a perfect rim profile. Which brings you directly to the tubular rim profile.
BTW: I was riding for the last 7 months on 22mm tubulars. Of this, at least a thousand miles was over packed gravel - not a single pinch flat. No flats at all actually, due to 20cc of Stan's sealant injected through the valve cores.
I understand you love your tubulars and dislike clinchers, but you are still wrong about pinch flats.
Here's a tubular rim:
Here's a clincher rim:
It's the very top edges that pinch a tube, not the hooks and not the flat inside surfaces of the tubulars. The top edges have pretty much the same surface areas on both rim types. Pinch a butyl tube hard enough with any of these and the minor differences will not matter at all. Latex tubes is what makes all the difference - tubulars typically have them, clinchers typically don't.