http://www.bikeradar.com/...t-on-tubeless-44186/
My own $0.02: I feel like tubeless is a bit of a gamble. Perhaps you have lower odds of flatting and you might be able to achieve lower on-road crr/more comfort but if you flat you're pretty screwed. I recently tried to take some Vittoria tubeless tires off my CX/Road bike (to put on Schwalbe Kojaks :) and I gave up after about 30 minutes of zero progress and opted to just cut them off. The Kojaks went on in about one minute apiece and I wasn't even rushing. For myself, personally, I don't think tubeless is worth the tradeoff on the road.
Particularly interesting excerpts below:
"But in those systems, there is something called an engine that offsets some of the factors like weight. We really don’t feel like this [road tubeless] system is fully baked yet. Some of that is because Continental has high standards. For instance, we ensure our clinchers can handle twice the pressure they are rated for. If it says 120psi on the sidewall, it will go to 240psi before it blows off the rim – and the rims usually break before that. To get to 240psi with tubeless, our tyre would weigh 350g, and that's not competitive. Also, in all our rolling-resistance testing, a GrandPrix 4000S and a light butyl inner tube outperforms any of the tubeless scenarios."
Mavic employee: "Of course when it is set up properly the benefits are unarguable. That said, for the average consumer the process of setting up a road wheelset to be tubeless is a very difficult and often frustrating process. Road tubeless must have a lot more rubber to be sealed, which makes the casing more rigid and the rolling resistance higher. This is not mitigated by the absence of a tube, despite what many people say. Coming to market with road tubeless, just to keep up with the trends, is not something we do. When we can come to market with something that has consumer benefits and is consumer friendly, we’ll make a push. Rest assured, we are not ignoring this topic."
My own $0.02: I feel like tubeless is a bit of a gamble. Perhaps you have lower odds of flatting and you might be able to achieve lower on-road crr/more comfort but if you flat you're pretty screwed. I recently tried to take some Vittoria tubeless tires off my CX/Road bike (to put on Schwalbe Kojaks :) and I gave up after about 30 minutes of zero progress and opted to just cut them off. The Kojaks went on in about one minute apiece and I wasn't even rushing. For myself, personally, I don't think tubeless is worth the tradeoff on the road.
Particularly interesting excerpts below:
"But in those systems, there is something called an engine that offsets some of the factors like weight. We really don’t feel like this [road tubeless] system is fully baked yet. Some of that is because Continental has high standards. For instance, we ensure our clinchers can handle twice the pressure they are rated for. If it says 120psi on the sidewall, it will go to 240psi before it blows off the rim – and the rims usually break before that. To get to 240psi with tubeless, our tyre would weigh 350g, and that's not competitive. Also, in all our rolling-resistance testing, a GrandPrix 4000S and a light butyl inner tube outperforms any of the tubeless scenarios."
Mavic employee: "Of course when it is set up properly the benefits are unarguable. That said, for the average consumer the process of setting up a road wheelset to be tubeless is a very difficult and often frustrating process. Road tubeless must have a lot more rubber to be sealed, which makes the casing more rigid and the rolling resistance higher. This is not mitigated by the absence of a tube, despite what many people say. Coming to market with road tubeless, just to keep up with the trends, is not something we do. When we can come to market with something that has consumer benefits and is consumer friendly, we’ll make a push. Rest assured, we are not ignoring this topic."