I built a new road bike last spring, set up with Mavic Ksyrium UST, and Mavic Yksion pro tires tubeless. I'm not kidding, I checked my GPS: 2.1 miles into my very first ride I run over something, front tire is spewing sealant, and eventually seals. It took a lot longer than expected to seal, but finished the ride. Over the next 700 miles or so last year, that puncture would occasionally open up, and would re-seal. By last fall it had developed a "bump" at the puncture point that I could feel while riding. So I replace the tire at the start of this riding season.

Last week the other tire was punctured by a piece of glass. Would not seal at all. I tried a plug on the roadside, would not seal. Honestly the puncture looked pretty small. As a stop-gap I put a tube in this tire and continued to use it. A few rides later, maybe 150 miles, I get a flat, and it is the tube trying to push through the small puncture where the glass had originally punctured the tire. I had put a patch on the inside at the puncture point to try and stop this from happening. It looks like the small hole was expanding as I rode.

So two ruined tires in roughly 1,100 miles of riding. If I replace this latest one, I'll be on my fourth tire. These are about $65 each, plus all the downtime.

Questions:

• Am I just unlucky here? I ride in Colorado, the roads are fairly clean. I maybe have 1 or 2 flats per 1,000 miles when using tubes. I thought those days were over.
• Is the Yksion just not good at small cuts? Should I try a different tire? I like the whole UST setup, this is my first tubeless and I had no issues installing the tires, no slow leaks. If there was s different UST tubeless that is supposed to be more durable, I'm all ears.
• I was using Stan's sealant. Some places suggested Orange seal instead.
• Should I just punt and go back to tubes?

If the hole was big enough for the tube to push out - sounds like bad luck.

If you stick with it, yes to the Orange Seal.

Big cuts are big cuts, whether you're running tubes or not; in my experience, 1/4" is about where even a good sealant is going to struggle, but those are few and far between for me, though I just had one today. My cut was big enough that the first "bacon strip" wouldn't stay put at pressure. I tried again, this time tying it in a knot before jamming it in to the cut - with the knot inside of the tire, it held pressure and got me home just fine.

No experience with Mavic tires, so I couldn't tell you what to expect with regard to durability, but it's concerning to me that the punctured area got worse. Approximately how big was it in the first place? If there's bulge at the cut/puncture, I'm binning the tire regardless.

As far a your rate of flats... depends. If you're usually riding 1000 miles per year, I'd probably go with tubes and live with the 1 to 2 flats. If you're riding 3000, 4000, 5000+ miles per year and would see as much as 10 flats per year? Tubeless all the way.

bruce19 has experience with Mavic tubeless(and constantly raves about them). It sounds like the OP is just unlucky. I doubt he'd rave about their tires if they were constantly getting cut down.

Here is the question... How many flats did you get that you never even knew about?

Cuts, well nothing can save you from those.

Barry

Tire size and pressure?

I do notice that this year there's been an increase in the number of people reporting tubeless flats and no one is surprised. Earlier, the mantra was "tubeless solves all your flat woes".

I still may give it a try again.

As Noodle Soup said....I have been pleased with my Mavic Ksyrium Elite USTs with Yksion tires. I haven't encountered a problem yet. I can't swear that it's because of the tire/wheel combination or just luck but my experience suggests it works well. If it's down to the cycling Gods I can only offer a sacrifice of bourbon and a cigar.

A lot of your punctures just sound like bad luck. However, I have a set of Mavic Allroad disc wheels on one of my bikes which came with 28mm Mavic tubes and tires. I don't know what it is about the set, but I've never had so many flats on a wheel set in my life and it makes me nuts. I don't know if their tires just aren't very puncture resistant or if Mavic just has bad juju.

700 x 28. 78psi.

Every post I've read about tubeless tires failing have actually been about Stan's failing to seal. Also the case IRL. Unless Stan's has completely dominant market share on road sealant, that's a pretty big red flag.

That has never been the mantra, at least not with anyone realistic.

Tubeless takes care of the mundane punctures, but there will always be exceptional ones. Today was the first time that I have had a ride interrupted by a puncture in more than two years. Actually, I take that back - it's the first time that I've had a ride interrupted by one of my punctures in more than two years - I've had more than half a dozen group rides interrupted by others that have gotten punctures.

The people that said that were idiots. Tubeless will prevent a huge amount of puncture flats(like 11 in one of my tires), but cuts like the ones the OP had are practically impossible to prevent.

Unrealistic idiots that they may be, that was what dominated the discussion here and on every forum on which they came up. I believe it was here someone said "back when I got flats, meaning before I went tubeless...". This was usually followed by statements that this is why it was idiotic to run tubes. I suspect it may depend on the nature of flats in an area. There is one particular true believer on another forum who insists every flat is user error.

Regardless, there is a change in tone around it this year.

This is *very* different than "tubeless solves all your flat woes."

I wouldn't blink if someone said the former - it's not at all hard to believe that someone would go a year or two or three without a flat - but I would likely provide a reality check if someone claimed the latter. That's just dumb.

There was context around that. But I'm not sure it's worth going into (rather, I'm sure it's not) as the discussion was a while ago. There was a clear statement of "tubeless solves all your flat woes and you're dumb if you don't convert".

However, where I ride, the killer is mostly construction debris and based on your 1/4" boundary, I'm not sure it would help here - it's mostly screws, nails, and gravel through the sidewall. And the resulting gashes are indeed > 1/4". The small punctures from glass or staples occur less than 1x/ year.

Regardless, it seems cycling (or at least road cycling) craves equipment flamewars. Wide rims, deep rims, aero vs lightness, rim vs disc, tubeless, 1x, carbon/ steel/ alu, threaded vs pressfit… what will it be next year?

how often do you have tires totaled by that crap? I few years back, I had a bad run where I gashed and totaled two tires and had another one separate at the bead (manufacturer replaced it), but nothing like that since (knock on wood).

My first experience with tubeless was Stan's sealant Stans rims and Stans valve core could not get a seal. Switched to DT Swiss rims ebay valve core and Trucker Cream sealant haven't had a problem since, going on 3 years. Have not bought another Stan's product.

Yeah, say no to Stan's. Works fine in MTB tires at lower pressures, pretty much unsuitable anywhere else. A piece of glass has the capacity to ruin any tire, tubeless or otherwise-- having latex sealant inside your tires instead of a tube won't magically make broken glass less sharp.

I'm having the exact same experience with mavic wheels and tires; same tire, cosmic pro wheel. I'm on my fourth tire replacement in <1k miles. These tires don't like glass or sharp rocks; steer clear of them. I find myself paying attention to the grain of the road surface while riding, though you can't avoid everything.

Too often - you may have heard that people like to move here. There's a lot of construction to make houses and apartments and condos for them. Even that way up north ride, which is where the cleanest roads are, has quarries on it that ensure a plentitude of 1-2" gravel on the shoulder that will usually eventually catch a sidewall. They're also putting in developments up there, so there's construction debris too. The saving grace up there is the shoulder is 6-8' with no curbing, so there's room to dodge and the debris doesn't get too thick before it rolls off the edge. In-town, anywhere but a quiet neighborhood (where we can't get much speed) has that debris trapped by the curb on a narrow shoulder. Tires get killed, and the riding isn't even pleasant. The dam loop has become the damn loop.

Austin has a lot going for it, but not the riding. We're "trapped" here because of jobs (really can't complain overall), but it's the poster city for lots of trainer + the occasional expedition.

I don't know why I didn't think of this yesterday, but I've been riding Hutchinson's Fusion 5 Performance 11Storms for the last ~3,500 miles. They're the same tires that have suffered both of my Goldilocks punctures - a cut too big to seal with sealant alone, but not big enough to ruin the tire - one was yesterday, obv, and another one last year, a couple hundred miles in to that tire's lifespan (and, IIRC, Bah Humbug's troublesome tubeless foray was on the same Hutch tires).

This may be notable because Mavic doesn't make their own tires, and it's pretty well accepted that Hutchinson is the manufacturer of Mavic tires... so maybe I do have some experience with Mavic tire durability. I'm not sayin', but maybe it is another data point. Other than those two cuts, though, they have performed well, seated easily, etc.

Had the same experience with stan's rim.

Now you have a reason to try the Schwalbe Pro One TLE Addix tires. Let us know how they work out.

I trimmed the bacon strip plug and took a look at it - it looks pretty good. I think that I'm going to pump it up to full pressure today and, if it holds fine, I'm going to ride it like this for another couple of weeks. For science.