One Thing You Should Never Forget About Tubeless Tires

from Rookie’s keyboard

Hello, friends

Today’s post is dedicated to tubeless tires and one peculiarity about them that riders often forget – the fact they can operate with regular inner tubes just fine.

Many cyclists with a tubeless setup frequently bring a spare inner tube in their gear for instances when the tire is too damaged for the sealant to repair the puncture. I am from that group too, although I no longer run tubeless tires. But when I did, I’d always bring a spare inner tube with me. 

Some Issues

1. The sealant is sticky and makes it frustrating (but not impossible) to install a tube.

2.  The sidewalls of tubeless-ready tires are thicker and more difficult to mount on a rim.

The Differences 

Below I have prepared a list illustrating the differences between conventional and tubeless tires:

• Thickness

Normally, tubeless tires do not have an inner tube (hence the name). You fill them with a special sealant that seals small punctures in the tire in “real-time”.

To avoid leakage (a.k.a. burping) when installing the tire, the sides (a.k.a. sidewalls) are reinforced.

• Tire Bead

The tire bead is the section of the tire that hooks onto the rim.

The beads of tubeless models are made tighter to solidify the bond with the rim. This is necessary because tubeless tires operate at lower air pressure (most of the time). If tubeless tires had regular beads, they may simply fall off the rim.

In contrast, standard tires with inner tubes require a higher air pressure to prevent pinch flats – punctures caused by the tire hitting a hard object. 

The tube and the added pressure enhance the stability at the attachment points and eliminate the need for a different bead shape.

• Air Retention Capacity

Standard tires and those labeled as “tubeless ready” come with a permeable tread and would quickly lose air without an inner tube or tubeless sealant.

“Legit tubeless tires” come with an extra lining that seals the tire. Of course, the trade-off is the extra weight.

Inner Tubes Are Welcomed

Honestly, fellas, tubeless-ready and tubeless tires do not have any properties rendering them fully incompatible with a regular inner tube. 

You can always remove the tire, install a standard inner tube with a valve matching the hole of the rim, and re-mount the tire.

I would even go a step further and say that a tubeless set-up would be useless if it was incompatible with an inner tube.

Why?

Tubeless tires offer protection against small punctures caused by tiny pieces of glass for example because the sealant re-seals the tire as soon as the “injury” has happened.

But if the cut is large, the sealant can’t do anything to stop the air loss.

If you get a tire cut, patch the tire with a boot(either a homemade one like a dollar bill or a commercial one), install a tube, and then re-mount the tire.

Hence even tubeless fanatics always carry a tube and a pump with them, especially when doing long-distance riding.

A Word On Rim Tape

Tubeless-ready rims have holes to access the spoke nipples. If you want to combine them with a tubeless tire, you have to cover the rim bed with tubeless tape so that the sealant doesn’t leak through the spoke holes.

If you have a tubeless-ready rim, and you are planning on using an inner tube, and the tubeless tape is already applied, you don’t need standard rim tape. 

A true tubeless rim does not have holes on the inner side for easy access to the nipples. Consequently, an inner tube can’t come in contact with the spokes or the spoke nipples and rim tape would be redundant.

Don’t forget that the only role of rim tape is to isolate the tube from the spokes, nipples, and spoke eyelets and prevent an “internal puncture“.

Why I switched back to inner tubes…

Tubeless tires have two main pros.

• Minor punctures are sealed instantly and thus the downtime is shorter.

• The absence of an inner tube makes it possible to run the tires at super-low air pressure that would otherwise cause a pinch flat. Hence why MTB riders love tubeless setups so much – lower air pressure = more contact area = more grip.

Low-air pressure tires absorb more irregularities and have greater contact with the ground. Hence why tubeless set-ups are more common for MTB tires.

The above is great but not enough to counteract the downside that a tubeless setup creates.

I am currently running tubes and don’t plan to switch back. I hated the following

• Tubeless tires are more difficult to install than standard models (the installation requires a compressor)
• The sealant contaminates the inside of the tire. The dirt builds up over time. The installation process is messy.
• The sealant can damage the valve core’s entrance.
• The emergency inner tube becomes unusable for future projects because you can’t remove the sealant that gets on it. 

Until next time,

Rookie