Why tubeless is the way to go, and why you should do it right

     About 15 years ago a french company called Mavic finally brought us a rim that was designed to run specially designed mountain bike tires without tubes. The great advantage is that you are able to run your tires at a much lower pressure since there's no risk of pinching the tube. That adds traction and decreases rolling resistant. UST (Universal Standard for Tubeless) is still the easiest system to use. The rim bed is completely sealed, and the rim hook is designed to lock safely with a UST tire rim bead. Simply install a valve stem in the wheel, mount the tire and pump it up with a floor pump. That's it!

     As you probably already know I started taking cycling more seriously in 2000 and started racing in 2005 but I was purely on the road. Off road riding was a light hobby and I didn't even get my first bike shop quality mountain bike until 2009, even then it was an entry level model. Road tubeless wasn't invented until 2006 and it remains a troublesome system. As a result I was ignorant to tubeless technology until only a couple of years ago.

 

   Like any bike rider I have fought flat tires my entire life and living in Arizona means that running a regular tube and tire isn't really an option. Usually tubes are good for one ride in a normal mountain bike tire. To combat this I ran Bontrager Hardcase tires on all our mountain bikes. They were lined with Kevlar from bead to bead and under the tread featured three layers of puncture protection. They were heavy, narrow, and more road worthy than trail worthy but you could run over a cactus (I tried) and ride away like nothing happened. I still maintain that these are these are the toughest tires on the planet and wouldn't think twice about putting them on a commuting bike but they were holding my real mountain biking back. I raced on them in 2011 and even though they did better than they should have I began to wish I had a wider ranger of tire choice.

    When I got my Superfly I had to set it up tubeless. Current tubeless systems even if they are UST (which doesn't need it) use a form of liquid latex sealant. This isn't that green goo you may have tried before (which doesn't really work), tubeless sealant acts fast and in most cases you won't even realize you had a puncture. The problem is that tubeless wheels are expensive. Retail costs on a mediocre set start at $500 and go way up from there. The other popular alternative is known as ghetto tubeless. By using Stan's rim tape and sealant virtually any set of wheels and tires can be converted to tubeless. To be safe I bought a pair of tubeless ready tires, which feature the safety of a UST bead without the added weight of a fully sealed tire casing.

     The set up worked but it took four hours, an air compressor, soapy water and a lot of frustration to set it up. Because the wheels were never meant for tubeless the tires had a hard time seating to the bead and if the tires ever lost air the bead was immediately lost as well and I'd have to start over again. Once I got it fully set up it worked pretty good and the sealant worked amazing. I once had a six inch screw go through the tread of my rear tire. It fully stabbed through the tire and was clanking on my frame when I discovered it. I pulled the screw out, bounced the tire around and it sealed right up. Most of the time I never even noticed thorns or other punctures. I knew a real tubeless set up was better but up until a few months ago I didn't realize just how much better.

     Last year we bought my wife a 2004 Cannondale Jekyll, even though it was used it was a major upgrade from her old bike and it came fully set up with Mavic 819 UST rims and UST tires. Tire choice was a little strange with one tire being a chunky (and nearly new) Specialized Captain 2.2 and the other being a very worn and narrow Michelin. I ordered a new Captain but in the mean time decided to move the good tire to the front for better control. Both tires mounted up with just a couple shots from the floor pump and held their pressure for months. When  I finally got the new tire it was the same story and when I let the air out the tire locked to the rim meaning that if I got a big enough leak out on the trail I could simply pump it up with the mini pump and let the sealant finish doing its job. I was hooked! (no pun intended)

     Wheels were still expensive but I saved up and began shopping around. It was highly recommended that I get wheels with DT Swiss or other high quality hubs and spokes that way just like my road wheels it would be a one time purchase. The cost of a Mavic set or Bontrager Rhythm Elites or Race X Lites was still daunting in new form so I turned to ebay. It took some digging but I finally was able to win a reasonably priced set of 2010 Bontrager Rhythm Elites with DT Swiss hubs. The Bontragers have the special tubeless bead hook but require a rim strip. No messy tape though; Bontrager's plastic rim strip snaps into the rim and seals it perfectly. I got some rims strips, a couple valves and two new brake rotors from the bike shop (only because my brake rotors used the newer style) and I went home to set them up.

   
 I mounted the tires and within two minutes had them both seated and sealed, they were as easy as as my wife's Mavics and in the process I got on upgraded wheel. I still don't have to worry about flats and now I have a reliable system that I can change anywhere, no need for an air compressor. Tubeless was invented for cars in the twenties and became commonplace in the forties. We would never think of putting a tube in our car tire so why do we mess with them on our bikes? On a road bike I use a slightly heavier race tire and in the past 8 years I've had two flats, one of those was with a 5 year old worn out tire and the other was with a crazy light race tire that I had lying around. As a result I have little motivation to go tubeless on the road but on the mountain there's no question. If you want to run a tire other than a Bonty Hardcase or a Specialized Armadillo then there's only one solution. It's worth the money to do it right and it's worth doing.