Tubeless bike tires with anti-flat self-sealing sealants — it seems to be the way to go, especially in the big-tire mtbike and commuter scenes.
Now, it does maybe weigh a bit more than going tubed, so road-racers aren’t doing it. But everyone else is, so it seems.
A huge bonus in all this is that you can run LOWER PRESSURE in your tires and not get pinch-flats. So you mtbikers who want more cush — it’s a prime way to get it.
I have an old 1989 MB1 mtbike with semi-lame suspost and sustem and I get beat to heck trying to keep up with the dudes on the Poto, with its roots and babyheads. If I run 30psi, I quickly pinchflat. But 40psi is way harsh. Ugh! This tubeless trick might help.
The main sealants and tubeless systems are Stan’s and Caffe’ Latex.
The inside scoop, though, is that you can easily make your own BETTER and CHEAPER sealant.
Apparently Stan’s dries out after a few months and needs refreshing. That wouldn’t work for me. My mtbiking goes in fits’n’starts and I got no time for foolin’ around.
Here’s the recipe for Swamp Sauce (you can also call it WSS, or “Wade’s Super Sauce”)…
16OZ part mold builder (Michael’s or Hobby Lobby)
24OZ ATV tubeless slime
32OZ water (many folks add some RV antifreeze)
(ratio it down for different amounts)
This doesn’t seem to be an exact science. Dudes often add GLITTER, of all things, to their mixes. Or pepper, or silica beads or mica — anything to add granular goodies that will blow thru and seal up little holes.
There is plenty of how-to info and YouTubes on the actually doing. There’s more to it than the mix, of course. There’s also a big fiddling-around going on with which rims and tires work best. Folks are, however, finding that a whole lot of set-ups work.
The main thing is that they say having a compressor is very helpful. But then again many say that a floor pump works fine.
Also, you need to make a sealed bed in your rim and there seem to be several ways to do this. You either stretch a size-smaller tube over your rim then slice it down the middle to make a “bladder” that your tire can ride on and seal against, and/or you run a couple loops of Stan’s Yellow Tape (whatever that is) then mount your tire. Folks are also using Gorilla Duct Tape to make a bed. And weather-stripping.
The next thing is that you need to wet down the tire and bead with sudsy-water sprayed ideally from a common pumper spray-bottle. Oh, and it helps if the tire has a kevlar bead. And you want a valve stem with removable core.
Store your sealant sealed-up well and bring a little nozzle-type squeeze bottle of it with you on the trail (I guess, some do, anyway). A nozzle-squeeze bottle makes refreshing it easy at home, too. But maybe you only have to do it once a year. It looks like it’s somewhat climate dependent.
…Whew!
Yeah, there’s a technique and some lore and T&E. But it seems (maybe) worth it! 🙂
Check out these threads for further discussion and info. (It seems like the obviousness gets a bit derailed with the appearance of Caulk and Windex, but you decide…)
forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=406115
forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=612071
