Where did you see that on zipps website?


From: https://support.sram.com/...t-disc-brake-wheels-

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blog

these wheels, along with the CADEX wheels we've written about, have a distinct feature: they're tubeless, hookless beads, and road-specific. the good and the bad of it is this: it's the coming tech. it's a stronger, lighter wheel, easier to manufacture, cheaper to manufacture, and that's why the price is palatable to you. it's a superior wheel in many ways. the bad is this, as some have noted: not every tire company has come out with a conforming tire yet. so...

when i ride this wheel, i ride it in 1 of 2 ways: both the S and the firecrest are gravel-worthy. part of that is because of the hookless beads: you can make the sidewall a lot stronger. so, you can ride this with a gravel tire, and there's loads of gravel tires made for hookless beads.

if i'm riding it for road, i put schwalbe Pro One TL tires on there. you can put others on there, and from memory i think it's panaracer, maxxis, pirelli, and then there's CADEX, and i suspect ENVE's tires, and of course zipp's tires. but schwalbe is the top of the heap right now. i would put 28mm or 30mm tires on there, and really the 30mm is the best if it'll fit into your bike.

i've had nothing so far but good luck with this wheel/tire combo, and that's both with the S and the firecrest. it's going to take some time before vittoria and conti have tires that'll work on this wheel. it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to put tires by these brands on these wheels, until these tire brands come out with a tire that's specifically made for hookless road. this is not withstanding the fact that some have ridden these tires. in each case, i've spoken to the folks, in europe, in charge of these brands, both conti and vittoria, and no, they do not currently sell tires that conform to this tech, at least for road.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Are you riding these wheels tubeless for road or tubeless tires with tubes?

these wheels are not good candidates for tubes. there are no bead hooks. air pressure is applied to the tire, all the way around it, but, most notably it's applied outward, against the sidewall, not up. this means the tire bead never leaves the shelf of the rim. if you put a tube in there, i guess i question the logic of that, because now the tire is subject to the "will" of the tube. i could imagine the profile of an inflated tube lifting the tire off the shelf of the rim. so...

i only ride this wheel with a tubeless tire, and i only ride with a tire designed for the 2019 ETRTO hookless specs. however, i gave this wheelset to paul thomas to specifically go out and thrash on gravel, to make sure this thing was gravel proof. while my wheelsets where ridden specifically in gravel, i ride them only for road, because i don't ride 700c for gravel any longer. i only ride 650b for gravel.

the only road tire this wheel has had on it is schwalbe pro one TT, and you have to make sure you don't get any legacy tires. search the site here - the front page - for the schwalbe launch in 2019. i believe the newer tires have an orange logo.

one thing about the difficulty in mounting tubeless. there isn't any. there certainly was. this is what the ETRTO update of 2019 solved. i don't mean to contradict the experiences of those posting in this thread, it's just that wheels and tires prior to that update were not made to a specific standard, so, tires often went on too easy or too hard. you couldn't ride a high pressure tire with a hookless bead at all prior to this update, because of the lack of a common standard. if you try to put any combo of zipp/CADEX/schwalbe tires on any combo of zipp and CADEX wheels, you'll have no problem. you can pretty much add ENVE to that as well, just, ENVE was so early to high pressure hookless that it actually made what it made prior to the ETRTO update. however, the ETRTO largely used ENVE's specs, so, i think it's pretty safe to throw ENVE in there.

more such wheels and tires are coming. the one big caveat is that they're not here yet for tri. that's coming too. but hookless high pressure wheels for tri are not here yet.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The arguments for tubeless are many.

With DT Swiss wheels and Continental GP5000TL, I have not found mounting the tire terribly hard. I am confident I would be able to do it on the side of the road in an emergency. With the DT Swiss wheels, I have not used the fancy pump with the pressure tank that I bought...it has been enough to just pump air in, and the tires are mounted correctly. The reduced risk of punctures was one, but not the central advantage, that attracted me to TL.

Advantages:
Lower air pressure offers more comfort and less rolling resistance. Faster and more comfortable? What more can a tire do for you?
I have had 2 punctures on TL; both sealed with no issues.
If I did have an issue, with practice and the right wheel and tire combination, it's not a big deal to stick a tube inside and ride on.

Love them!

Your explanation nicely demonstrates your intuitive logic, but the tube pushes out in the same way as air without a tube. In both cases, air pushes perpendicular to the surface, either against the tube which pushes on the tire, or against the tire directly. At the bead/shelf, it is outward. At the tread it's upward. The "will" and shape of a tube comes from the "will" of individual air molecules pushing equally in all directions.

Cheap wheels are cheap (303S) and expensive wheels are expensive (CADEX) whether hooked or not. To suggest the Zipp and Enve models in question are $1000 cheaper in significant part because they eliminate hooks is disingenuous given that very high quality hooked rims (i.e. Lightbicycle) can cost $250 or less. The hooks can't reasonably make up more than $50 of the wheel cost, if we are being generous.

Also, a pair of 1mm x 2mm hooks (measured on my Knight 95) on a 700c wheel (~1.2cm^3 x 2 per wheel) made of carbon (~1.5g/cm^3) adds ~3.5 grams per wheel. 7 grams per pair of wheels. Now how many grams have to be added to strengthen the tire beads so they don't pop off without hooks? Even if it's 0 additional grams for the tires, you are at best saving 7 grams.

There may be good reasons for going hookless, but price and weight are not them.

Time will tell. But I'm going to go ahead trust the statements from wheel designers at Zipp, Enve, Flo giving detailed information about the tooling differences, etc, over you pointing vaguely at one direct-to-consumer-from-China vendor as definitive proof of the difference in manufacturing cost.

You're free to believe manufacturer coolaid, of course. I believe them that it's cheaper, too, because it makes perfect sense. But they aren't quantifying the cost savings of hookless for us. Hookless is also lighter. Makes sense. But it's 7grams for a pair. Cost savings are likely similarly small.

Lighbicycle is a reputable brand among the DTC brands, which is why I used them as a proxy. But fine, if you don't like that one let's make another comparison. Clincher vs tubs, which not only don't have hooks, but completely eliminate the sidewall, making it even cheaper to produce. Do tub versions cost $1000 less than clincher versions of the same wheel? No, they don't. Usually it's $50 per wheel.

I'm just weighing the difference between random guy on Internt Kool-Aid and manufacturer Kool-Aid. :)

Right after I posted that I thought to myself you'll probably only respond to that sentence and ignore the rest. Gave you an easy out.

I'm openly doing the math and providing sources that are quantifiable and verifiable. Manufacturers say "lighter" and don't tell you it's 7g. Similarly they say it's "cheaper" but won't tell you if it's $50.

Why aren't tub wheels $1k cheaper than the same wheel in clincher form?

your explanation also nicely demonstrates your intuitive logic. there's one way to know: a blow off test. all the premium wheel brands engage in blow off tests. perhaps some will come on here and tell us what their results have been w/ and w/o tubes installed.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The tooling (mold) for a tubular rim is about $4,000.

For a clincher/tubeless rim, it is about $7,000.

Even if it cost $20,000, the difference is not significant when you will be able to use the mold to produce thousands of rims.

This would be very interesting to see.

Maybe l am wrong, but l would bet that these set ups without tubes would fail at a lower pressure than the identical set ups with tubes.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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I suspect both would hold enough pressure to he able to perform their function, and most likely failure would result from something going wrong with the tire rather than an issue with the rim. It would be an interesting test though, maybe do it with a few of the more popular tires and examine the failure mode after

I'm riding tubeless on my MTBs since 2004. Love it. Made the switch to tubeless on my cyclocross before real tubeless options were available. This was before gravel bikes had been "invented". Sort of liked it.

Of course, made the switch to road tubeless when options got available. The entire experience just sucked. Last year I made the switch back to tubes. Actually to Schwalbe's Aerothans.

• flat protection was not overwhelming. Some sealants really suck at higher pressures. Flat protection was always the main selling point for me. The higher pressure is an issue.
• mounting and especially getting off a tire (especially road side) can be a nightmare. You really have to be lucky to find a rim/tire combo that works. Now with the new standard things may become better but who knows. I've had some tire-rim combos which worked perfectly, others which were pure nightmares.
  
• maintenance: I have several wheelset (these days one road/gravel bike-with several wheelsets strategy). Always checking sealant levels, replacing clogged up valves (seems to more an issue with the higher pressures). Annoying.

MTB or gravel (depending on terrain), ye. Road not for me anymore

I can't say for road. Depending which road bike I'm on my Continental 4000S's or 5000's with a Latex tube is awesome to ride. Usually ride at 95 to 100 psi. 700 X 23 and a 23 mm rim on my Blue AC! caliper brakes. and 5000S 700 X 25mm on a 25mm rim on my Litespeed T3 disc. I love both bikes. I believe I'm a little faster on the Blue. The ride on the T3 is much better and seams more responsive on the T3. Love the disc's too!

I do ride tubules on my Sette CX-1 with Michelin Mud II tires. Wet the rim and hit them with the compressor and they seal up and add 2 scoops of Stans. Add a scoop every 3 to six months.I don't do cross so this is my gravel bike.

Also rim tubeless on my Borealis Crestone fat bike. I'm running Sun Ringle 65mm X 27.5 Mulefut rims with 45Nrth Dillinger 4. Using it on the road I ride about 14 psi, 6 psi mtbing and 3 to 4 for snow.

While tubeless makes sense on my cross and fat bike, I just can't see it for the road. Flat protection? I've had maybe 4 flats in over 20,000 road miles. Not a bike deal.

Does Flo even make hookless carbon road or gravel rims?

Because their very newest gravel wheels have hooked sidewalls.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
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i sent my aerothans to tom anhalt to play with and to report back. i'm interested to hear your experience with them. as to the rest, road tubeless is mostly a *thing* nowadays only because high pressure is not high pressure anymore. the idea is to run it at 80psi or less, and that only works with a lot of volume in the tire. in fact, the hookless bead system really is only 70-something psi phenomenon. unless your wheel has a 23mm or greater inner bead diameter, and you're running 28mm or larger tires, hookless makes no sense and tubeless doesn't really come into its own.

i think tom was right in his opposition to it, thru the lens of high pressure meaning what it used to mean. right now i run higher pressure in my truck tires than in my road bike tires. as to the janky combos, those are going away, but i don't blame you. i've got a lot of tires and wheels passing thru the workshop here, and all the new stuff is pretty much interchangeable. the most unfortunate tool i own is the tire jack, as in, if you need one to mount a tire there's something very, very wrong with the system.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I think the people who benefit the most from tubeless road are heavier riders. Lighter folks could already run clinchers in the low 70s/high 60s.

First couple seasons I rode I was just shy of 200lbs and had to run around 100psi, otherwise I'd pinch flat constantly. TLR made complete sense because it meant I could run a more reasonable pressure.

My only complaint about tubeless road is that the selection of winter tlr tires in 25mm isn't that great. Maybe that's a sign I need to swap my rim brake bike for something that can fit something wider.

I am running Pirelli Cinturato Velo TLR 26mm this winter (measures 28mm on my rims)

I had the opposite experience. Contis 5000 tubeless were so easy to install, did it in like 5 minutes. On the same wheels, Schwalbes were an absolute nightmare, even needed to get a compressor to sit the tire, not sure I will buy them again. The Contis also seem to roll better. Don't know much about puncture resistant since I only rode them over the Summer on reasonable quality road surface so no issues so far with either.

I've been riding the Aerothans since last late summer in two of my road/gravel wheelsets. I log ~18h/wk on these (no idea about miles). So far no issues. I run them at fairly low pressure. On my gravel wheelset I had a few times the tire bottom out. No pinch flats yet. Seems robust. I would ride regular tubes at this pressure. I will see how this goes. However, I also tend to run more robust tires. So I don't know how susceptible the tubes are really. All I know: they are blo**dy expensive.

On the pressure thing: I have a strong MTB background, everything about 20 psi is high pressure for me :-)
Joking aside, I ran my 28, 32, 35 mm tires at fairly low pressures. Despite that I had tubeless fail me a couple of times. Things that would have sealed on my MTB for sure. I could always fix it with a plug but still, these were never severe punctures.

Good to hear that the standards may have fixed some of the problems. I had to cut several tires because I could not get them off the rim. However, this also bad news because it means all my wheelsets are previous generation now. Damn ...

Keep us posted on your decision. I’ve only ridden tubed clinchers, but am considering tubeless.