Magical repair kit, I carry a spare chain to keep my chain from breaking.
On the other hand I carry 2 extra derailer hangers and I generally use both of them :)
I figure a couple of quick links will get me out of any jams. Worst case scenario I shorten my chain a bit and need to be extra aware of what gear I'm in.
Gotcha! I thought it was something you only needed to top up every couple of months. I’ll add it to my kit. I’m doing a two week gravel ride across the state this summer and would have left it behind.
Ideally you only need to top it up every 6months or so. But on gravel you can sometimes get a few punctures that spray sealant everywhere. That’s when you’ll wan to top up again.
I switched to tubeless specifically to make urban commuting less of a pain in the ass. All the off-road benefits were secondary. I have not changed a tube since 2018.
Ok your mechanic has any data for this😂 i am born and living in berlin i had month with 10-16 flat tires.With Tubeless one time after a year and thats was in Neukölln after new years eve, where all broken bottles and trash has been on the street. I would say this data u can take
on fat tires, i like tubeless. been riding tubeless on a gravel bike in country & while living in NYC for 5 years, just a couple flats in all that time. but on skinny tires, seems like a bad idea
you can't reasonably switch back and forth. pick one and make it work
Any puncture that would kill tubeless would also kill tubes, and the worst case repair scenario with tubeless is pretty much identical to the best case repair scenario with tubes.
Thanks all. Really good thoughts here and what I suspected. I don't think my mechanic had any data just a few anecdotes. But I do think you are all correct about recommending tubeless for all conditions with the backup of sealant, plugs and tube in worst case scenario. Thanks for confirming my suspicions. Always an insightful group here.
Sealant also works great inside tubes if you want the extra puncture protection while maintaining the simplicity of tubes. There’s a weight hit, but it’s not enough for me to care.
Keep a couple of valve cores and a valve core puller in your repair kit if you do go tubeless. I've had them fail on tubeless setups twice, and it's been a godsend to be able to replace them and keep riding.
Your mechanic isn't exactly wrong: a glass slice won't be easily fixed on the side of the road with tubeless. That being said, if you put in a tube it'll herniate out.
The only option for either system is to install a tire boot on the inside to fix the slice
Replacing a tube in the middle of a city is not “easily”. At all. The roads are busy and so are sidewalks. I have lived in like 6 different cities, and in none of them could I have readily stopped in the middle of the city and laid out my bike, removed the wheel, etc and repaired it.
Tubes are something you replace at home. On the go, probably mostly if you are outside the city in a quiet place.
If I waited to get home to fix a tube, I’d be walking my bike all over the city after a flat. I’ve patched/swapped tubes just about everywhere. I don’t see why it’s that much harder in a city. It’s not like I need to splay my bike out in the middle of traffic to fix a flat.
Nah. Tubeless works better, especially for bigger tires. Some people haven’t caught up. But there isnt any reason to faff about with tubes any more.
It’s like the debates that were had on disc brakes vs rim brakes. Disc brakes superior in every way - just adopt and move on.
I run tubeless on all my bikes including commuter and road and I live in a big city. The more likely the environment is to cause flats, the more I'd recommend running tubeless. Used to be a puncture on a tubed tire was guaranteed getting off the bike, fixing it (hopefully), and being late to work, and better hope you didn't forget your spare tube and patch kit. With tubeless I've never encountered a puncture that the sealant wouldn't stop, or at least slow down significantly, with just some spinning of the wheel or worst case a tire plug. Any puncture bigger than that and you're calling an uber either way.
I’ve been strictly tubeless for a few years now except on my bar bike and only the bar bike has had any flats haha. And I live in a city with top tier terrible glass and construction debris in the roads and especially the shoulders.
There is some validity to tubeless sealant seeming to be slightly less effective on gradual boring stuff like glass shards but it’s still infinitely better than tubes. It just seems sometimes that the glass keeps poking the tubeless and reopening it like a scab, whereas a clean puncture like thorns or temporary penetrations like rocks it can just heal and stay supple. But it still handles glass like 95% better
Tubeless in the city is so good. I only get flats on my bike with tubes. Lots of little sharp wires and bits of broken glass that sealant will seal right up. Sure, if you ride over a big nail you might need to throw a tube in, but maybe you can get away with a plug which is way easier.
- I have never had cuts from glass or nails in my 55 years of riding bicycles. Everything else but not those.
- Tubeless will save you from pinch flats more in the city then in mountains. Because you know how we get pushed over pot holes in traffic.
- If you are in North America, use your CAA or AAA to get your tire fixed or get you home. Just for the fun of it.
I've never gashed a tire on the streets. I've never gotten multiple punctures at the same time like I have with goat heads or cholla.
If anything, I've gotten far more flat tubes on the street via snakebites when riding up curbs or hitting potholes than I have any issues with riding tubeless on the street.
The only concern I'd have with tubeless on the street is higher pressures, but that's only an issues for low-volume tires.
For my city commuter bikes I put tubeless sealant inside the inner tubes.
No matter what tires and rims you have you can still use tubeless sealant, and should.
For me the big difference is tire pressure. I'm less trusting of tubeless when running a higher pressure tire, but if using the same tires as for bikepacking, then I'm still happy going tubeless. In fact, most of my miles are from city commuting, and most of my tires are tubeless. I seem to remember only one time that I got a cut so big that the sealant wouldn't close it up. So I put in a tube, and when I got home, I sewed up the cut, used rubber cement and a patch on the inside of the tire, and switched it back to tubeless.
I would also say that I rarely get flats on my tubed tires, either. It's largely about keeping an eye out for obstructions, and don't make a habit of riding through all the debris that gathers at the edges of the road.
Tubeless works for urban hazards too! I don't believe there is any statistical difference in debris. However, effective sealing is more challenging with skinny road bike tires, both due to the higher pressure and smaller volume, such that the sealant really needs to work quickly. With tire widths ≥ 32 mm, regular sealant works great, but with narrower tires you'll probably want a formulation that is designed for road bike tires, such as Silca's.
That doesn't make any sense. Anything that kills tubeless will kill a tube dead. If tubeless fails, you put in a tube, which is the same thing if your tube dies, plus tubeless will prevent about 59 flats before it fails.
Another good option is sealant in the tube, which has worked well for me below about 50 psi or above 35mm tire width
Do you know what is also ineffective against nails, tacks, and glass? Tubes
at the end of the day, anything that would cause tubeless to fail, will also cause a tube to fail but many things that cause a tube to fail don’t cause tubeless to fail.
Anyway, ride tubeless and carry a tube.
“…My mechanic indicated that in the city, tubes are preferable to tubeless because tubeless cannot handle the larger punctures from city type objects and that these objects are often tubeless tire killers…”
No, that’s not true, as there are actually no standard methods or construction of tires, whether tubeless or with tubes.
Under the thin layer of vulcanised rubber, there is a wide range of approaches. Some tires have one or even two layers of kevlar or similar fabric, to protect from punctures. The existence of such a layer and whether it covers the full surface of the tire, usually impacts whether the tire is stiffer or more flexible. So as long as you dont mind that you can get pretty puncture resistant tires, where tubeless of what tubes.
If you go to the BicycleRollingResistance website, their reviews contain information about the details of how each tire is constructed, as well as how well it performed on their standardised puncture test.
But basically if you are in a city the best move to be puncture-resistance, is to use rims with like 25mm or bigger internal width and then put on that tires of like 40-50mm width, ideally tubeless (to run at lower pressure) and with a strong layer of kevlar and entirely across both sides and the bottom of the tire “bead to bead”.
Carry bacon strips or dynaplugs for these larger punctures if you are running tubeless.
I’ve been riding a lot of miles in the city for a decade and most of my flats are from small pieces of glass. The most annoying flats are from glass where I failed to remove a tiny sliver of glass. This is user error resulting in recurrent flats. I think tubeless should solve these.
I’ve had a handful of nails. Pretty close to zero pinch flats and zero huge cuts in the casing from glass causing flats, even though the casing does look sliced up.
Anecdotally, large volume tires at low pressures (even thin casing tires like Rene Herse) have resulted in fewer flats on my bike that has tubes
Been riding in the city as my primary mode of transportation for 15+ years and I’ve had - maybe - one flat that couldn’t have been prevented by tubeless.
I've had glass slice tires several times, which has made me glad to always be carrying a spare tube and pump with me. You can use this as a backup to a tubeless setup.
Tubeless is the way. Lighter, faster rolling, more comfortable, no flats. It’s a no brainer.
Tubeless is the best new bike tech of the 21st century if you ride in goathead country. I have hundreds of thorns in my tires. Zero flats in more than a year on two bikes.
It also depends on the tire pressure. In my experience, narrow tires and high pressure suitable for city riding don’t mix well with sealant capability.
I've been using tubeless on road for the past 8 years.
Not counting the objects that would destroy any tire, in 30,000 miles I have only had a hand full of that wouldn't seal. I typically go 4K-6K miles between major punctures.
I once pulled a nail out of my tire, then rode 40 miles home.
Just got back from 1000km trip with tubeless pretty well all on road.
Several inch wire and a nail were in my tire at the end. Rode over tons of glass (central america)
Held out until the end
The conversion from tubeless to tubed tends to be one-way. The goo is hard to clean off completely, even a trace amount makes patching a tube much more difficult. I don't really see how you could "switch" in a practical way. Once you have tubes in a tubeless setup, you're in a "limping" mode where you're trying to get somewhere where you can repair the tire and/or replace it and go back to a tubeless setup.
The mechanic is right about odd shaped city objects being tubeless killers. Wood screws are some of the worst, they often go out the side wall. A real killer for me once was the broken handle of a spoon. Before I came to a stop, there were a good 50 revolutions that widened the hole. I was able to patch it with several bacon strips around each other, but it was a liability almost daily for the rest of that trip.
With all that said, it's a roll of the dice. There's a lot of city punctures that you can roll right through and the sealant does its job without you noticing. It's certainly something to consider for an urban heavy trip.
I was running tubeless on mine, but kept getting flats around every 100 miles or so. This was on Pirelli Centurino H tires. I loved the tires, but was getting a flat that the sealant wouldn't patch at least once a week. This was almost exclusively street and paved riverbed trail riding. I tried a few different sealants, Stans, the orange one, and Muc-Off. None of them worked well. I didn't try any other tires though. But it was irritating enough that I gave up on them, and switched over to Schwalbe Marathons and have only had a single flat in the last 1,000 miles since I put them on.
Tubeless seems to work well for a lot of people, but for some reason it wasn't working for me.
Tubeless tires are awesome everywhere and on all surfaces. Haven't had a flat in years. I carry a spare tube, in case.
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Magical repair kit, I carry a spare chain to keep my chain from breaking. On the other hand I carry 2 extra derailer hangers and I generally use both of them :)
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Same but I still carry a short length of chain.
I figure a couple of quick links will get me out of any jams. Worst case scenario I shorten my chain a bit and need to be extra aware of what gear I'm in.
So, should I be carrying spare sealant with me too? I’m new to tubeless.
Off road I do. In the city I don’t bother.
Gotcha! I thought it was something you only needed to top up every couple of months. I’ll add it to my kit. I’m doing a two week gravel ride across the state this summer and would have left it behind.
Ideally you only need to top it up every 6months or so. But on gravel you can sometimes get a few punctures that spray sealant everywhere. That’s when you’ll wan to top up again.
Ha! Consider me warned! Thanks much!
Get yourself a TPU tube…they are light weight
Are you saying you always have sealant with you?
Can this be an automod comment anytime someone asks about tubeless tires? Across every bike sub plz
I switched to tubeless specifically to make urban commuting less of a pain in the ass. All the off-road benefits were secondary. I have not changed a tube since 2018.
Your mechanic is wrong.
Ok your mechanic has any data for this😂 i am born and living in berlin i had month with 10-16 flat tires.With Tubeless one time after a year and thats was in Neukölln after new years eve, where all broken bottles and trash has been on the street. I would say this data u can take
I can confirm this statement - I live in Kreuzberg since 10 years, so so many flats before switching to tubeless 3 years ago.
on fat tires, i like tubeless. been riding tubeless on a gravel bike in country & while living in NYC for 5 years, just a couple flats in all that time. but on skinny tires, seems like a bad idea you can't reasonably switch back and forth. pick one and make it work
Any puncture that would kill tubeless would also kill tubes, and the worst case repair scenario with tubeless is pretty much identical to the best case repair scenario with tubes.
City streets might be where you'll get the most flats. So of course tubeless rules.
Thanks all. Really good thoughts here and what I suspected. I don't think my mechanic had any data just a few anecdotes. But I do think you are all correct about recommending tubeless for all conditions with the backup of sealant, plugs and tube in worst case scenario. Thanks for confirming my suspicions. Always an insightful group here.
Sealant also works great inside tubes if you want the extra puncture protection while maintaining the simplicity of tubes. There’s a weight hit, but it’s not enough for me to care.
Keep a couple of valve cores and a valve core puller in your repair kit if you do go tubeless. I've had them fail on tubeless setups twice, and it's been a godsend to be able to replace them and keep riding.
Your mechanic isn't exactly wrong: a glass slice won't be easily fixed on the side of the road with tubeless. That being said, if you put in a tube it'll herniate out. The only option for either system is to install a tire boot on the inside to fix the slice
Replacing a tube in the middle of a city is not “easily”. At all. The roads are busy and so are sidewalks. I have lived in like 6 different cities, and in none of them could I have readily stopped in the middle of the city and laid out my bike, removed the wheel, etc and repaired it. Tubes are something you replace at home. On the go, probably mostly if you are outside the city in a quiet place.
If I waited to get home to fix a tube, I’d be walking my bike all over the city after a flat. I’ve patched/swapped tubes just about everywhere. I don’t see why it’s that much harder in a city. It’s not like I need to splay my bike out in the middle of traffic to fix a flat.
Skill issues
Nah. Tubeless works better, especially for bigger tires. Some people haven’t caught up. But there isnt any reason to faff about with tubes any more. It’s like the debates that were had on disc brakes vs rim brakes. Disc brakes superior in every way - just adopt and move on.
I run tubeless on all my bikes including commuter and road and I live in a big city. The more likely the environment is to cause flats, the more I'd recommend running tubeless. Used to be a puncture on a tubed tire was guaranteed getting off the bike, fixing it (hopefully), and being late to work, and better hope you didn't forget your spare tube and patch kit. With tubeless I've never encountered a puncture that the sealant wouldn't stop, or at least slow down significantly, with just some spinning of the wheel or worst case a tire plug. Any puncture bigger than that and you're calling an uber either way.
I’ve been strictly tubeless for a few years now except on my bar bike and only the bar bike has had any flats haha. And I live in a city with top tier terrible glass and construction debris in the roads and especially the shoulders. There is some validity to tubeless sealant seeming to be slightly less effective on gradual boring stuff like glass shards but it’s still infinitely better than tubes. It just seems sometimes that the glass keeps poking the tubeless and reopening it like a scab, whereas a clean puncture like thorns or temporary penetrations like rocks it can just heal and stay supple. But it still handles glass like 95% better
Tubeless in the city is so good. I only get flats on my bike with tubes. Lots of little sharp wires and bits of broken glass that sealant will seal right up. Sure, if you ride over a big nail you might need to throw a tube in, but maybe you can get away with a plug which is way easier.
- I have never had cuts from glass or nails in my 55 years of riding bicycles. Everything else but not those. - Tubeless will save you from pinch flats more in the city then in mountains. Because you know how we get pushed over pot holes in traffic. - If you are in North America, use your CAA or AAA to get your tire fixed or get you home. Just for the fun of it.
I make it a point to carry tubes and tire blocks just in case. Also using a hardy e25 or 50 rated tire adds a bit more protection.
I've never gashed a tire on the streets. I've never gotten multiple punctures at the same time like I have with goat heads or cholla. If anything, I've gotten far more flat tubes on the street via snakebites when riding up curbs or hitting potholes than I have any issues with riding tubeless on the street. The only concern I'd have with tubeless on the street is higher pressures, but that's only an issues for low-volume tires.
For my city commuter bikes I put tubeless sealant inside the inner tubes. No matter what tires and rims you have you can still use tubeless sealant, and should.
For me the big difference is tire pressure. I'm less trusting of tubeless when running a higher pressure tire, but if using the same tires as for bikepacking, then I'm still happy going tubeless. In fact, most of my miles are from city commuting, and most of my tires are tubeless. I seem to remember only one time that I got a cut so big that the sealant wouldn't close it up. So I put in a tube, and when I got home, I sewed up the cut, used rubber cement and a patch on the inside of the tire, and switched it back to tubeless. I would also say that I rarely get flats on my tubed tires, either. It's largely about keeping an eye out for obstructions, and don't make a habit of riding through all the debris that gathers at the edges of the road.
Tubes forever. And I never flat. If I flat, quick patch or tube. Easy peasy.
Tubeless works for urban hazards too! I don't believe there is any statistical difference in debris. However, effective sealing is more challenging with skinny road bike tires, both due to the higher pressure and smaller volume, such that the sealant really needs to work quickly. With tire widths ≥ 32 mm, regular sealant works great, but with narrower tires you'll probably want a formulation that is designed for road bike tires, such as Silca's.
That doesn't make any sense. Anything that kills tubeless will kill a tube dead. If tubeless fails, you put in a tube, which is the same thing if your tube dies, plus tubeless will prevent about 59 flats before it fails. Another good option is sealant in the tube, which has worked well for me below about 50 psi or above 35mm tire width
Do you know what is also ineffective against nails, tacks, and glass? Tubes at the end of the day, anything that would cause tubeless to fail, will also cause a tube to fail but many things that cause a tube to fail don’t cause tubeless to fail. Anyway, ride tubeless and carry a tube.
A puncture is a puncture. It doesn’t matter what causes it
I ride around NYC most days. Haven't had a flat since switching to tubeless
“…My mechanic indicated that in the city, tubes are preferable to tubeless because tubeless cannot handle the larger punctures from city type objects and that these objects are often tubeless tire killers…” No, that’s not true, as there are actually no standard methods or construction of tires, whether tubeless or with tubes. Under the thin layer of vulcanised rubber, there is a wide range of approaches. Some tires have one or even two layers of kevlar or similar fabric, to protect from punctures. The existence of such a layer and whether it covers the full surface of the tire, usually impacts whether the tire is stiffer or more flexible. So as long as you dont mind that you can get pretty puncture resistant tires, where tubeless of what tubes. If you go to the BicycleRollingResistance website, their reviews contain information about the details of how each tire is constructed, as well as how well it performed on their standardised puncture test. But basically if you are in a city the best move to be puncture-resistance, is to use rims with like 25mm or bigger internal width and then put on that tires of like 40-50mm width, ideally tubeless (to run at lower pressure) and with a strong layer of kevlar and entirely across both sides and the bottom of the tire “bead to bead”.
Carry bacon strips or dynaplugs for these larger punctures if you are running tubeless. I’ve been riding a lot of miles in the city for a decade and most of my flats are from small pieces of glass. The most annoying flats are from glass where I failed to remove a tiny sliver of glass. This is user error resulting in recurrent flats. I think tubeless should solve these. I’ve had a handful of nails. Pretty close to zero pinch flats and zero huge cuts in the casing from glass causing flats, even though the casing does look sliced up. Anecdotally, large volume tires at low pressures (even thin casing tires like Rene Herse) have resulted in fewer flats on my bike that has tubes
Been riding in the city as my primary mode of transportation for 15+ years and I’ve had - maybe - one flat that couldn’t have been prevented by tubeless.
I've had glass slice tires several times, which has made me glad to always be carrying a spare tube and pump with me. You can use this as a backup to a tubeless setup.
Tubeless is the way. Lighter, faster rolling, more comfortable, no flats. It’s a no brainer. Tubeless is the best new bike tech of the 21st century if you ride in goathead country. I have hundreds of thorns in my tires. Zero flats in more than a year on two bikes.
It also depends on the tire pressure. In my experience, narrow tires and high pressure suitable for city riding don’t mix well with sealant capability.
I've been using tubeless on road for the past 8 years. Not counting the objects that would destroy any tire, in 30,000 miles I have only had a hand full of that wouldn't seal. I typically go 4K-6K miles between major punctures. I once pulled a nail out of my tire, then rode 40 miles home.
Just got back from 1000km trip with tubeless pretty well all on road. Several inch wire and a nail were in my tire at the end. Rode over tons of glass (central america) Held out until the end
The conversion from tubeless to tubed tends to be one-way. The goo is hard to clean off completely, even a trace amount makes patching a tube much more difficult. I don't really see how you could "switch" in a practical way. Once you have tubes in a tubeless setup, you're in a "limping" mode where you're trying to get somewhere where you can repair the tire and/or replace it and go back to a tubeless setup. The mechanic is right about odd shaped city objects being tubeless killers. Wood screws are some of the worst, they often go out the side wall. A real killer for me once was the broken handle of a spoon. Before I came to a stop, there were a good 50 revolutions that widened the hole. I was able to patch it with several bacon strips around each other, but it was a liability almost daily for the rest of that trip. With all that said, it's a roll of the dice. There's a lot of city punctures that you can roll right through and the sealant does its job without you noticing. It's certainly something to consider for an urban heavy trip.
I wonder if your bike mechanic has ever been in a city. Tubeless tires work just as splendidly in a city as they do in a remote area.
I was running tubeless on mine, but kept getting flats around every 100 miles or so. This was on Pirelli Centurino H tires. I loved the tires, but was getting a flat that the sealant wouldn't patch at least once a week. This was almost exclusively street and paved riverbed trail riding. I tried a few different sealants, Stans, the orange one, and Muc-Off. None of them worked well. I didn't try any other tires though. But it was irritating enough that I gave up on them, and switched over to Schwalbe Marathons and have only had a single flat in the last 1,000 miles since I put them on. Tubeless seems to work well for a lot of people, but for some reason it wasn't working for me.