Darth Lefty 

Not really asking. Just complaining.

Andy_K 

You've got to cover all of the tooling costs that went into manufacturing a stem with no tube, not to mention the R&D.

It does make me wondering, especially in light of the ghetto solutions that are so common in the tubeless world, could you cut the stem out of an old tube and make it work for a tubeless setup?

fietsbob

you get prestige when you buy things that cost more .. Cheap? stick with innertubes drop the tubeless thing ..

spdracr39

Because they manufacture millions of tubes and only thousands of tubeless stems so the R and D and tooling costs have a smaller volume of product to be distributed through.

Darth Lefty 

You're cracking me up, man. R&D for stems? I think you might be overestimating the amount of engineering needed.

sail

The newest thing usually comes at a premium.

Andrew R Stewart 

+1 for the above. That and that any one who is going tubeless is already accepting a higher cost for the other aspects of the system. "What the market will pay". Andy

spdracr39

Hey you may not realize it but those wind tunnel tests are EXPENSIVE !!

RubeRad

Absolutely. I saw a utub video recently where a guy made exactly this point, it's cheaper to buy tubes and cut the valves out than to buy tubeless valves. Can't find the video again right now, but I'm about to tubeless convert two mtbs when I'm off for xmas this year, and I couldn't find any tubes with removable cores that were cheaper than the cheapest tubeless valves. I ended up ordering these, I like that they include the tool as well. I plan on using TruckerCo cream latex sealant (seems well reviewed, comes with syringe) and gorilla tape, all with WTB TCS rims and tires that should be pretty easy to convert (1pr Bronson and 1pr Kenda SmallBlock8).

Andy_K 

I'd be interested to hear how it works for you. I've got a couple of wheelsets with WTB TCS rims that I'm still using with tubes because I've never gone to the trouble of figuring out how all the tubeless stuff works. It's on my to-do list.

Two stems for $10 doesn't seem too bad. The main reason I asked is because not long ago while looking for a washer I found a removable core in one of my parts drawers. A few days later I was going through my pile of old tubes to see which ones were worth patching and I found a nice Continental tube that was missing its core. It took me about half an hour to figure out where I had seen it. That tube ended up being patchable, but the OP got me thinking that I probably throw away tubes from time to time that have a perfectly functional stem with removable core. I'm not saying I'd avoid buying the part designed for the job, but maybe I'll cut a few of these out when the occasion arises and keep them around as emergency provisions.

RubeRad

I checked through my pile of abandoned tubes, and none of them had removeable cores.

I will definitely be posting at BF after I'm done with the conversion. I'll try to remember to drop a post here as well.

FYI here's another link that looks good to me, I almost would have done this homebrew sealant, but TruckerCo with included syringe just seemed more cost/effort-effective.

Darth Lefty 

There's a longrunning thread on MTBR about ghetto tubeless. They have, over the years, developed several formulas, one is essentially a copy of Stan's. They also identified the tape that's equivalent to Velotape or Stan's yellow. They're all very cheap when not bought through the bicycle industry.