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Tubelessness

Fool

The Thing cannot be described
Sep 10, 2001
2,761
1,471
Brooklyn
New plastic mail order road bike came tubeless ready. I have spare valves and an abundance of spooge. Is it worth it? Thoughts and prayers and experiences?
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,031
5,921
borcester rhymes
so from what I hear, the current consensus is that toobless does indeed reduce rolling resistance but it comes with a huge pain in the ass level of installation hassle. weight is virtually identical between thicker tire, goo, and tape vs. tube and tire. You don't really need lower pressure for road like you do with mountain, but you do need to pump up your tires virtually every ride, so it's kind of a tradeoff.

tl;dr DO IT and tell me how it worked.
 

6thElement

Schrodinger's Immigrant
Jul 29, 2008
15,828
13,067
I and S are tubeless on our roadies, I have been for a year now with about 1000 miles, she just got a new bike we built with tubeless.

Trying to get GP5000 TL tyres on our carbon rims made me question the reason why I was trying. When I flat roadside I might end up just throwing the wheel away. I had to beef up our roadie saddle bags to have Pedro's levers. On normal clinchers I never needed levers.

Unlike MTB, I don't know yet if it's worth it, unless you frequently get flats on the road then give it a try.
 

6thElement

Schrodinger's Immigrant
Jul 29, 2008
15,828
13,067
What happened to good ole tubulars?
If you're racing I think they're still just about preferred by the pro-teams. But some of those use tubeless now quite happily.

I think for the average Joe tubulars are too much of a PITA.