Normal to have a few small air leaks with no sealant in. The other issue is you want to be sure the cable nut is very hand tight.
Some tire have piles of pin holes that sealant is required to seal before they’ll hold air for days.

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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson

Yea I guess that was my point. Should I expect ZERO air leak before adding sealant? Seems the answer is no. FWIW, using Enve AR wheels and Enve tires/tape/valve. Thanks for the info.

As another sanity check, I’ve always had leaks setting up tubeless until I add sealant. I’ve also experienced where a new tubeless tire (with sealant) goes completely flat overnight. I’ve then filled it up with air again, spun the tire around to move the sealant, and then it’s been fine after that.

Be happy you asked this

First time I setup tubeless one wheel was airtight / no leak and the other wasn’t. I removed tape, tried different tape, tried different tires... wasted so many hours

Squirt of sealant sealed it up straight away. Never done the “does it seal with no sealant test” on any subsequent wheels.

Welcome to the tubeless world!

Yea I was really just trying to get the tire seated before adding sealant so I didn’t spray it everywhere. Then I noticed the small leak so it got me wondering.

That is a smart practice. You’ll wind up saving a lot of sprayed sealant if you dry seat tires and install the sealant with through the valve stem.

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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson

Definitely a good idea to seat and then add sealant. And tighten valve nut again once the tire is pressurized. Also helps sometimes to ride bike around a little bit to ensure tire fully seats.

I have the same wheel and tire setup and found it to be fairly straightforward.

My experience exactly.

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Mike Sparks


I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

I have two sets of wheels - Both the exact same except rim depth - tires on both Conti GP5000TL's
This past weekend I decided to retape both and get them ready for the warm weather heading our way.

One set with used tires already sealed - I seated the tires with a compressor and no sealant and they held air for 24 hours with no loss. deflated and added sealant.
Second set of wheels were brand new tires with never any sealant. Seated the tires with a compressor and they held air for maybe an hour or so.

ie......sealant makes a BIG difference on brand now or never sealed tires.

Why did you re-tape your wheels?

When removing the tires in the winter I noticed the tape was starting to peel on a wheel so just decided to retape before spring.......I only actually retaped the one wheelset, the other still has the original tape. Not a difficult thing to do.

Funnier thing is I purchased some new tubeless valves - no brand off ebay - (wanted some red bling). Never would expect an issue with valves, but apparently the shape of the rubber and the rubber being super hard, they would not conform to the rim bed shape when tightened causing the new valves to have a small leak into the rim cavity.....and found out Reynolds rims do not have a drain port making the cavity air tight (almost catastrophic).