Resigned to just using tubes this year instead of going tubeless
 

What a pain in the butt. Cleaning out the old sealant then getting the tire to stay inflated. Seating the tires is no issue with the fillmore tubeless valves. I stick the tires in a tub of water, cannot find any leaks but the air finds its way out.

In the last 5 years, I have yet to fix a flat while riding tubeless. But you have to carry a couple of tubes regardless. Kind of negates any advantage to running tubeless, especially at 65. a bottle for sealant. Plus that dried up crap you need to clean out.

How many of you converted to tubeless. Did u decide to switch back.

None of the bikes I've converted to tubeless have gone back to tubes. But when I swapped touring bikes I failed to source tubeless rims for the new one. That was stupid, because obviously that would have saved a lot of headaches. Well, it's always fun to build more wheels I guess...

You probably don't need more than one tube for a ride. If that. I don't carry tubes with the MTB. Just a small dynaplug system. For the road bike I carry a tube but haven't needed it yet.

The sealant I use is water soluble so I prevent the dried up boogers by pouring in some water every once in a while. I'll clean the rim when I swap a worn/damaged tire for a new one.

I don't care about pressure loss. If there is any I just ride the bike and at some point it stops. If by some chance the tire's gone completely flat during the night I'll just pump it up before setting off. I check pressures before every ride anyway.

Traitor! Heretic!

;)

Went tubeless (Mavic specifically) about 5 years ago on 4 bikes. Have never had a flat or a problem with mounting or maintaining them. Never going back to tubes.

My mountain and gravel bikes are tubeless and I wouldn’t even consider running them with tubes. I carry plugs and CO2. I do bring an extra tube but I’ve never used it.

Most issues are with the valve sides. It’s rare but this is where I see leaks. The only other is that you have to ensure the rim and tube are clean with no goo-bers when mounting.

My road bike has tubeless compatible wheels and I have used them. I switched back. There was no weight savings, no discernible difference in rolling, and I don’t put a ton of miles on that bike, so I don’t like maintaining my goo for it.

You twice mention cleaning out the old crap? Why?

Very happy with tubeless but that’s me, just finished a month long tour in South East Asia riding a light supple performance tire with no flats. That is only possible with tubeless.

3 wheel sets are now tubeless and am not going back. 3 punctures in 3 years over 32,000 miles is the reason. Different wheel and tire combinations are much easier to deal with (mounting and seating) than others as I have found out. I may have more patience for the fiddly stuff too.

Was this rim sealed using rim tape? Is the air leaking past the tape?
I find that tubeless rim tape is the weakest link in the system. If you want to go tubeless, find an actual tubeless rim with no spoke holes in the rim bed.

I've gone back to buying and riding my tubes tubed. Tubulars. Tubes inside tubes. And back to the old ride - totally tubular (in the sense of the kids' "tubular" of a few years back). The magic carpets. Hand made by artisans in some distant corner of the planet. (They are getting more modern. The hand stitching is still there but they no longer recruit silkworms for the casings.)

The Paris-Roubaix race just happened this morning. As usual flats were a deciding factor. And one chilling note early in the race. I was following on the written commentary of Cycing News. They mentioned a rider having his tubeless tire come off entirely. Did not say more about the outcome. But I had an old clincher tire come off a few years back and that was one of my top 5 crashes. Rear. First I was riding on "ice". Then the tire (rear) jammed in the seatstays; pitching me over the bars. At just over 20 mph. Tires coming off has been a nightmare for me since - preventing me from enjoying high speed descents and literally; waking me up more than a few times. The #1 driving force in my return to tubulars which I rode for 20 years. Last September, I loved the fast descents at Cycle Oregon with those tubulars. Down rough chip seal with cracks. Down roads I knew nothing about. On tires I could trust completely.

Tubeless offers zero advantages...I have no interest in tubeless, it's just not worth the hassle of having to deal with messy sealant, leaks and all kinds of other tubeless specific crap which is required...I use tires with puncture protection and I don't get a lot of flats with tubes so that's what I will continue to use.

I switched from tubeless back to tubes on my road bikes, but I'm still in love-hate relationships with tubeless tires on my gravel bike and my wife's road/gravel bike.

I love my tubes. But I am a roadie and not in an area with goatheads or such. I do not care for serious mountain biking, and real gravel riding is not in my regular routine. 100+psi in road tires is my comfort zone. I do buy $$$ tires and change them before completely worn out. I average about one flat per year in 2-3000 miles. I consider that a reasonable trade-off when measured against the cost of converting to tubeless. I can change a tube with no problems, so (for me) tubeless is not a technology of cycling progress.

I do carry sealant for the many bikes with tubular tires. And I have switched many bikes to 27-30mm tires instead of 22-25 exclusively, since the larger tires are now available with better casings than in the past.

I've gone tubeless on my gravel bike and don't see myself going back to tubes there. The drawback is I avoid changing out tires. On my road bikes I still ride with tubes because I often change tires, sometimes swapping tires between different bikes, and tubed clinchers make that exercise just a tad less tedious.

Went tubeless on two road bikes, Thousands of miles later, I'll never return to tubes.
I do like Mavic's "Fore" technology. The inner rim is not drilled and there is no need for Rim Tape.

Barry

Well...
- Lower rolling resistance
- Lighter
- More secure tire/rim interface (though you get the same benefit by using a tubeless tire on a tubeless rim and using a tube. But that'd be silly)
- the opportunity to use a fast, light, supple, comfortable tire with next to no fear of flats.
- no pinch flats

Sure you can slice a tire in such a way not even a plug can fix it. But in that case it matters not even if you have a tube, tubular or in many cases a puncture resistant garden hose.

I used sealant on two fat tire bikes but for my mountain and road bikes there is no big advantage where I ride. If I road in goat thorn country with my mountain bikes it would be different. I run my mountain bike tires at normal pressures as I am not that proficient to gain by running lower pressures.

I have had only one flat tire in past decades and that was thanks to a motorist tossing a glass Coke bottle out on the road and my riding over the shards with my bike.

You are obviously perfectly suited for high performance latex tubed clinchers or tubulars. In my area Mountain bikers are almost 100% tubeless because of the performance advantages and reduced flats. Being able to ride decades on the road or mountain biking without getting a flat is an amazing accomplishment especially if you are running performance tires.

Unfortunately punctures are a reality for myself and a majority of other sporting cyclists, gravel riders and touring enthusiasts and thus the popularity of tubeless. I love the feeling of a supple performance tire and if that requires adding some sealant every 6 months or so it’s worth it for me.

Not going back to tubes. Only had one puncture running tubeless in 3 years, which sealed and has stayed sealed ever since. Will probably stop carrying a tube on rides soon.

Comparing roadside repair incidents in group rides from recent memory, 2 with tubeless and 2 with tubes, both tubeless punctures involved pulling over, waiting for the sealant to seal, then a few pumps of air to top off. Of the tubed punctures, everyone had a nice long break waiting for the victims to go through the whole tube replacement process, with one taking extra long since for whatever reason the guy went through all his inner tubes and CO2. That guy punctured again later, at which point his ride was over since the rest of the group was already well ahead before we heard about it.

To properly set up tubeless does involve extra work in the garage, but it saves so much time and trouble later out on the roads that it's a trade off I'll take every time now.

Two comments - a tubeless rider in today's pro race had a tubeless come off completely. And tubular riders have been carrying spares far longer than I have lived. With that spare, doesn't matter what happened to the first.

Mo comments in bold:

Tubulars can also come off the rim in certain conditions. Ask Joseba Beloki about that
Extreme example, but what race is more extreme than Paris Roubaix?
I have never had a road tubeless tire come off the rim, but I have rolled a tubular

After going through a bad patch with flats I put solid rubber tyres (Tannus) on my belt-drive Marin, thus creating a virtually zero-maintenance bike. Since then, although it's not the most enjoyable bike to ride in my, ahem, collection, it has seen substantially more kilometeres than any of my other bikes.

I'm sticking to tubeless for MTB, still on the fence on road. I do have one wheelset with 30mm tyres set up tubeless which I'm thinking about just putting tubes in.

I never clean the dried tubeless out of my tires. If I pop a bead for some reason, I only clean the bead and the rim if necessary to get the bead seated again.

... for you

I prefer tubeless by a wide margin, except for the bikes I don't use often. What this really means, is the one bike I using 95% of the time I run tubeless, the others I use tubes. But where I live, running tubes more or less requires using tire liners and Slime or similar in the tube. Just too many goat heads around. Makes for a very heavy setup compared to tubeless.

I don't get the OP's thing about cleaning out old sealant. Most of the time, the only reason I ever remove a tubeless tire is to replace it when it is wore out. So, I don't need to clean the tire, it's going in the trash. And the rim just takes a moment to wipe clean since the sealant won't be dried out.

The biggest problem I have had was getting a tire to seat. This also happened to be a tire that was almost impossible to get on or off. I'm not exaggerating. Required 2x4 levers, using socket heads as fulcrums, and often took days because I needed to rest my hands. That was just to get the tires on or off the rims. Getting the damn thing to seat was a whole other issue. I don't use those tires anymore.

Tires that can be mounted by hand also seem to be the ones that will seat very easily. I can setup tubeless as fast as a tube in this case.

While I do carry a spare tube with me on the tubeless setup, I really question why. In 4 years of running tubeless, I've never needed to put a tube in. I do almost all road riding, so I'm sure this is why. But I've had to plug a tire a few times. But that is still way easier than replacing a tube on the side of the road.

If I could run a bike tubeless, and have the sealant stay fresh for months when I don't ride the bike, I would run all my bikes tubeless.