What is the upside to tubeless road vs latex tubes? Help me understand.

I prefer latex tubes.

Not sure there are any, but I run them nonetheless. The wheels I wanted were tubeless, I get good pricing on schwalbe, and my stock of latex tubes are aging. Therefore, it made sense to me. I don't really see a downside other than not having the fastest options.

---

My YouTubes

 


I have Hed Jets which can be run tubeless too, but if it is not faster I don't see why you would want to do it. I am running 3 year old latex tubes and they seem fine.

I have tubeless on my MTB, it is faster and lighter on an MTB. The downside is that if you ever get a major flat and need to repair trailside my understanding is it is messy. I wonder if it would be a total mess on the road? Also I have had to add sealant my second year on my MTB because my LBS warned it would leak a little more on the sidewalls with age... Would that happen on a road wheel?

Did you race on those G+ speeds with 23mm or 25mm? The link you attached led to 23mm on AMZN and I cant find a Speed model in 25mm on the web. Just seeing if you knew anything. The vittoria website is having issues so I cant check there either...
JF

FWIW, my youngest latex tube might be 4 years old. I still run latex tubes and fast tires where it matters (Time Trial bike), but since I no longer race anything outside of time trials I'm not wrapped up in having the fastest setup out there. Now, I don't think what I have is slow and I doubt a GP4K with latex is noticeably faster; therefore, since I can and there is no downside, why not?

At the end of the day run what you like. Tubeless has its place in MTB and I love it for that, but for road it's much less clear if there are any advantages. However, there doesn't have to be an advantage to everything. Sometimes trying different stuff is advantage enough. For me, and perhaps I didn't explain this well enough the first time, I was buying new wheels and tires for my build. Therefore, there was no cost to making the change, as I was buying new kit anyways. Had I had a set of clincher wheels I wanted to run on my bike, then I would have stuck with what I had.

---

My YouTubes

Fewer flats.

It eliminates pinch flats. Which can let you run lower pressure at times if you want - like a ride with a gravel section or super rough road.

Also tubeless tires seal better than putting sealant in latex tubes (at least in my experience). I ran sealant in latex for years, and actual tubeless tires seal much more reliably. I don't know why. They just do. My one theory is that maybe the latex is so smooth that it provides nothing for the sealant to "bite" against.

I switched completely over when the Vittoria CS came out as a top-notch race tire. Vittoria CS for racing and I've been going back and forth between the Pro One and Hutchinson Fusion for training tires. No regrets so far.

Ability to run sealant and resulting reduction in punctures. Elimination of pinch flats. I've run tubeless on my gravel bike for a couple of years and NEVER flatted, despite riding some pretty rough stuff. I'm a big believer in tubeless.

How many flats would you normally have in a year? I could see how a gravel bike might get more flats


I ride about 3000 miles on the road a year and about 400 mountain bike miles and if I had to guess I get one flat every other year. I wear out more presta valve stems (the brass part gets bent on occasion) from re-inflation than I change on the road. . I ride pretty bad roads, including a fair number of dirt stretches. I think my luck with not getting flats has to do with using either good quality or no rim strips depending on the bike, there are not thorns in my area like there are in some places, and I check tire inflation every ride unless I rode the day before. I use good tires, I have Michelins, Conti GP4000, Force, Attack, etc. Mix of Latex and non latex. Latex on all my race wheels but so far I see nothing really keeping me from changing all of my tubes to latex as they get replaced. I am not convinced Latex is less durable.

I'd say 9-10 flats per year in about 10,000 miles of riding. Live in an area with a good amount of goatheads and a other little road debris insidious to tires. Not a huge gravel rider, but do venture on gravel a bit.

Tubeless I've had only one flat in about 15 months where I had to use a tube on the side of the road. That was a slashed sidewall. The rest either sealed automatically, or I could plug them and re-inflate without having to break out the tire levers.

I guess the next question is whether Vittoria will be making a Cross Speed TLR in 700x28mm?

I use these too. I've changed from conti simply because of these tires, shame I struggled to get them here is SE Asia!

The section of bike trail i train on frequently has a large amount of goathead stickers.

Some of the ultra slow, heavy casing tires do okay against these, but tires like gp4000s, rubino pro, etc usually get the sticker stuck in, and before you can even come to a stop to pull it out, your tube is punctured. Tubeless tires aren't phased. The sealant takes care of it. Other than that, i don't see too much benefit in road tubeless as of right now. I very rarely flat a gp4000 with tube unless i'm riding in a place with these stickers. If i know they recently mowed around our trail system or if i saw broken glass, i'll ride my gravel bike with high volume tubeless tires instead of my road bike. If a company does come out with the magic tubeless tire for all-around training/racing, i would use it; but in my experience it doesn't exist yet.

Regarding trying to run non-tubeless tires without tubes -- My teammate gave me some tires to test out tubeless. I mounted them up, pumped them up to 80psi (they were 28s) and got on my rollers to get a feel for how fast they were. About 30 seconds later, there was an explosion and latex splattered all over the walls, ceiling, and floor. I called him up and he said "oh, i forgot to tell you. They aren't really tubeless, so you have to run them under 60 psi." Glad i was on the rollers and not descending somewhere! I never had the courage to try those tires tubeless again.

I raced on the 23mm but remember on wider rims these already balloon quite a bit. The 25mm also didn't exist when I bought my year supply.

---

---

Save: $50 on Speed Hound Recovery Boots | $20 on Air Relax| $100 on Normatec| 15% on Most Absorbable Magnesium

Blogs: Best CHEAP Zwift / Bike Trainer Desk | Theragun G3 vs $140 Bivi Percussive Massager | Normatec Pulse 2.0 vs Normatec Pulse | Speed Hound vs Normatec | Air Relax vs Normatec | Q1 2018 Blood Test Results | | Why HED JET+ Is The BEST value wheelset

Here is a more recent test from early 2017.....a bit more recent than the link provided which was from a 2015 test.
Schwalbe Pro One Tubeless came out on top of their test - no mention of durability or traction.



https://www.bikeradar.com/...es-lab-tested-49101/