Originally Posted by
Mdavis5011
Tires that came with my giant defy 0 are tubeless. Have ridden a few hundred miles I these tires on bike paths and find that I really prefer tubes. With gatorskins I never got flats, and now I find that I need to fill the tires and when I check the pressure the gook spews out. It's a mess for no perceived benefit. If I were riding on thorn ridden trails, I'd understand the benefit, but on bike trails it seemed that I simply inherited periodic maintenance for no improvement.
What am I missing?
If you're comfortable on gatorskins... you're missing nothing. I tried them once and didn't like them.
For me personally, I prefer something a bit more subtle. I switched from high TPI cotton clincher (Vittoria Open Corsa) to road tubeless about 10 years ago and found that I got a close enough feel running tubeless at lower pressure, but with much better puncture protection. Price difference was a wash as tubeless tires at the time cost about the same as the Vittoria, but I saved a ton of money on tubes, and probably 20-30min a month I wasn't on the side of the road replacing them.