Tubeless Tires: Pros and Cons
So many options…
So you’re curious about tubeless tires for your drop bar bike. If you happen to be a road cyclist almost exclusively, especially a veteran one, then the idea of bike tires, even tubulars, without inner tubes might sound unnerving. After all, the noble yet expandable inner tube has been keeping you rolling for decades and, in many cases, will continue to do so. Between tradition and some technical limitations, tubeless tire adoption for road bikes has been very slow.
Tubeless tires have been the standard for performance mountain bikes for over a decade, on the other hand. Like so many other technical innovations in cycling, tubeless tires matured on singletrack prior to adoption in other disciplines, and for good reasons:
With larger tire volume, tire pressures are lowing in mountain biking, which is more amenable to a tubeless setup.
Small punctures typically seal themselves with sealant so quickly that you don’t lose much air pressure, and might never know you have a puncture.
Tire pressure can be lowered when there’s no risk of pinching a tube on the rim, a boon to traction and ride quality when riding off-road.
Changing a punctured tube in the woods with mosquitoes feasting on you is pretty miserable.
When “road tubeless” first debuted back in 2006, it was a bit of a solution in search of a problem and, for many valid reasons (overly tight tire fit, heavy tires, early sealant formulations), it didn’t catch on. As other trends and technologies have advanced, however, those early obstacles have mostly been addressed, and tubeless tires on road bikes actually make a lot of sense (at least for certain types of riders). Today, tubeless ready rims and tires are readily-available in lots of variants, and tubeless-ready wheels ship with many bikes.
At Cronometro, I recommend considering tubeless tires for a few groups of clients:
For general road riding, run tubeless tires 28-32mm wide: Once a road tire gets narrower than 28mm, the required tire pressure for most riders means that punctures don’t typically seal before you lose an appreciable amount of tire pressure. If you currently run narrower tires and don’t spend most of your ride time above 18 mph, you should probably be riding 28s already, but that’s a separate discussion.
The exception to the above would be for road racing, for which I would suggest 25mm tubeless tires.
Gravel and Cyclocross bikes: Your ideal tire pressure for traction and low rolling resistance is probably less than you could safely run without pinch flatting an inner tube.
Mountain bikes: For so, so many reasons, going tubeless for your mountain bike is like going from dial-up to broadband internet. Fewer flats, less rotating mass, more traction, smoother ride; all good things.
If you have tubeless tires, but aren’t sure at which pressure you should run them, we can help make that determination for you based on a few parameters. Additionally, SRAM has a very helpful, albeit technical, tire pressure calculator for all tire types.
So, why would someone not want to run tubeless tires on their road bike? There are certainly still a few remaining considerations. Firstly, tubeless requires a bit of care and feeding that inner tubes simply don’t, and that mostly involves the use of sealant. Liquid sealant eventually dries out (usually after six months or so) and won’t seal your punctures, so it needs to be replaced at the beginning of your riding season, at a minimum. This, plus removing dried sealant from your valves, is something we at Cronometro can help with at each spring, and as needed during the riding season.
Furthermore, tubeless tire tires still fit somewhat tightly in order to seal against and stay seated to your bike’s rims. In the event of a truly massive tire puncture that requires the installation of a tube, this can make it more difficult to get rolling again mid-ride. Most punctures too large to seal with sealant alone can be sealed with a tire plug, though. That same tight fit can make tubeless tires more difficult to install at home. Not every tire and rim combination will produce a fit so tight that it’s difficult to install and remove the tire, but it happens more often than with clinchers and tubes; my current tires, Veloflex Corsa Evo TLR 28s, were actually pretty easy to set up!
In the end, you have to decide if the benefits to your ride are worth the additional complexity in your bike’s maintenance. Personally, I haven’t run an inner tube in a road bike in over five years, but I’m willing to deal with the additional maintenance because I believe the benefits outweigh the effort for me. I love running lower tire pressure, feeling the extra grip and comfort, and not getting slow leaks from road debris, but I also don’t mind the occasional sealant change or valve clean-out. Your preferences may vary, and that’s OK. In the end, neither of us have a car and a mechanic following us around on our rides, and we should all be comfortable with the components of our bikes.