Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
Most people call them
boogers. Whether you get them depends on the sealant and the tire.
And others call them coral because they look more like coral than like snot. And whether you get them or not depends on a lot of factors of which the tire is probably the least important. Oxidation, agitation (or not), nucleation, reduction if sealant volume, etc could all cause the latex to agglomerate.
Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
I am assuming nothing about the condition of the sealant I mentioned in my tandem. Some sealant leaked out of the valve because I forgot it was there and pumped it up valve down, and it behaved just like it did when I put it in. It lasted because it was left alone inside a tube.
I question if it is exactly the same as when it went in. Did you really do a comparison to fresh sealant? Was it less milky and more watery? I've seen Slime sealant leak out of valves on old tubes and while it still looks green it is much clearer than fresh Slime. The sealant should be very milky...colorless and cloudy to use the proper chemical description...to be effective. As I said, you could still have "liquid" but it would be the same mixture.
Just leaving it alone isn't going to have much of an effect on the longevity either. Sitting around without agitation is likely to lead to more coral (or booger) growth as the particles are in closer proximation and more likely to agglomerate. Think paint in a can.
Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
The same stuff in my MTB tires, used regularly, has lasted as short as expected. You sometimes hang on really hard to your theories how things should work without paying attention to actual experiences of the people who are doing it.
I have been paying attention to actual experiences. I just question your observations. That's not a slight on you or anyone else. Even I make the wrong observations at times. But just because you have liquid still in the tube doesn't mean that it's the same liquid as you put in there to begin with. You have a small amount of liquid in contact with a lot of air. Stuff happens.
Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
But anyhow it's not important, he's probably going to put in the Tuffy's because it's easier and they work fine on goatheads. My tweenage 24" MTB experience with them 30 years ago was that if you don't keep your tire pumped up hard they let it squirm and shear off the valve, which probably won't be a problem for a boring responsible adult.
You are attributing a problem to the wrong equipment. If you had tires that squirmed and sheared off the valve, the problem wasn't with the Mr. Tuffy's. The Tuffy's don't "squirm" and they certainly aren't going to rip the tube valve off. Running under inflated tires is the cause of the sheared off valve. You don't even need Mr. Tuffy's to have that problem. Tuffy's may chafe the tube occasionally but they won't cause the tire and tube to move on the rim.