I am actually using puncture-resistant tires already.
And annoyingly, I picked up the wrong size tubes, and didn’t have time to exchange them for the right ones (the shop closed at noon today).
I’m convinced that the thin metal that the tubes of glue are made of get holes in them as soon as you squeeze them. I try to avoid making a sharp crease in the tube of glue. It also seems to help to burp all of the air out of the glue tube when you put the cap on.
I’ve had better luck with keeping a larger 1 or 2 ounce tube of glue at home, buying plenty of tubes and bulk patches, and only opening he glue when I have a dozen or so tubes to patch. I just ride with two or three tubes and no patch kit. And replacing tires when the threads start to show through the tread.
I’ve resisted going tubeless on my road bike, but just pick up a set of wheels that the previous owner used as tubeless, so I may give it a try. On my mountain bikes, I went tubeless several years ago and never regretted it.
i got some tubeless (schwalbe) on my old road bike about 18 months ago.
HATED them. Horrible ride over anything but the smoothest road surface and terribly slow.
Nb. Not oppossed to them on principle. A friend of mine had them on his fat wheeled Mountain bike. Loved them, seemed fine when I gave them a quick ride. The problem is I just don’t think they work on skinny road bike tyres.
You just recommended super tough hard case tyres as not making any real difference performance wise, but tubeless was a horrible ride and terribly slow? Something amiss there matey, if you don’t mind me saying 
Reality is that road tubeless works great and gives a flawless ride, it’s just a bit of a niche - Not realistic for most commuters as you need a dedicated wheelset that would cost more than their bike. plus road pinch flats are relatively rare, so it’s not the no-brainer solution that it is for mountain biking, and then the high performance market is run by tubulars. Road tubeless still works and performs great, though.
Only place where tubeless is a bit iffy nowadays is cyclocross - the middle ground. Relatively small volume tyre at an intermediate pressure is vulnerable to burping the tyre over the rough stuff. Even then it can be done, if you’re willing to accept the occasional disaster.
So much for optimism…
No, nothing amiss. Simply my practical experience of the two. Hard Case is still a pneumatic tube with all the benefits of that especially on dodgy roads. Allegedly you lose a couple of % in efficenty off the top end, but It wasn’t enough for me to notice.
On the other hand with the Schwalbe I noticed an immediate and dramatic difference in top end speed the first time I took it out for a proper ride. The same effort to peddle at 31-32kph was barely getting me to 24-25 and every wrinkle and bump in the road felt terrible.
Sounds like you’re talking about something else - a tubeless tyre is a pneumatic tube and there is zero practical difference in effort riding them to a tubed set-up for the majority of folk [tubeless will be marginally better with subtle differences in road feel, but you’d need to be well into bikes to notice it].
It sounds like DeptfordX is maybe referring to solid-rubber tires. Which would indeed be tubeless, and have the advantage of never going flat, but they’d make for one Hell of a ride.
Yeah, I think he’s talking about solid tyres. There are various tubeless tyres around, currently you’d most commonly find them on a mountain bike where a tubeless setup prevents pinch flats and allows for lower pressures with correspondingly more grip.
But Schwalbe doesn’t seem to make a solid tire, and they make good tires so I wouldn’t think **DeptfordX **would have such a bad experience with their tubeless tires either. Unless it’s a regular Schwalbe tire over a solid “inner tube”. But I haven’t seen a solid “inner tube” in years. That was basically a solid round rubber ring that would fit between the rim and a normal road tire. Those do suck. Friends of mine who worked as bike mechanics hated those things because they were a bitch to install.
Hey, just checked and they do sell them to the unsuspecting rider. Called NoMorFlat. I had them on my first 10 speed bike, a Schwinn Varsity made from lead filled schedule 80 steel tubing. I guess I thought what’s the harm in a few extra pounds on that bike?
As an aside (sorry OP) the Schwalbe PROCORE looks interesting. Took me a while to realize why they did this, but the inner PROCORE tube acts like a beadlock. Neat!
This seems on the surface to be a good idea (the protection strip), but it doesn’t seem to have caught on. Is it not as effective as it first appears it should be?
I DIYed it, but only using old tubes as the liner. A real bugger to get them sat in there properly too.
Old school riders (read: cheap) would make a liner out of an old tire, usually an old tubular racing tire where there was not a bead that had to be cut away. But tubie or beaded tire, some trimming of the sidewalls was needed to make them fit. Effective, but a real PITA to install. Basically a tire inside a tire, ride quality was not at all good but the durability was great for those long training rides.
Yeah, the procore is gaining some traction (heh ;)) with the mountain biking crowd. It lets you run super low outer pressure for grip and high inner pressure to keep the bead seated.
Cugal, the Kevlar strips are pretty good. I used to have them in my town bike. They don’t prevent pinch flats or sidewall damage and if they are in there a long time they become “melted” in to the tyre. This happened to my tyres to the point that I couldn’t reuse them. That said, this was largely because I hadn’t had any punctures so had no reason to remove the tyre. They also add some weight which some people won’t like.
Re the patch glue tube drying out, I haven’t used the type with glue for ages, because of the drying out issue and because it is messy and you have to wait a couple of minutes for it to become tacky.
For many years I have been using the self-adhesive patches from Park Tool. You just peel them off the backing and stick them on. I’ve never had one fail.
Huh, I used glueless patches two kits back, and had not one but two tires fail due to failed patches, something I’ve never experienced with the glued patches. Though I can’t remember what brand they were; maybe I just had really low-quality ones.
Isn’t that Huffy’s top-of-the-line frame today?
I use these. The kit is tiny and lightweight and they work flawlessly in my experience.
We met a fellow “traveler” at a bike camp along the Pacific coast who informed us people he “rode” with used discarded metal window blinds as tire liners. Very flexible, and practical, and important if your goal is to prevent punctures and have that tube last as long as possible. No word on how having that between the tire and tube affected performance.
I have also heard of wrapping a tube with another discarded tube of the same size.
Sounds brilliant. Those blinds are very light and are in different widths. I’ll keep an eye out for old blinds.
Uh, you know, for my cheap friends.