MTB Tubeless Conversion - First Experience
A friend of mine (a tubeless fanatic) finally wore me down and I converted my mountain bike to tubeless this weekend using Stan's strips and Caffélatex sealant.
Yesterday was my first hard ride on the tubeless set-up, and it was going great - I was pushing hard, the responsiveness and grip of the tires felt great, and all in all the bike was responding awesomely.
Then... I heard a clinking sound a lot like I'd broken a spoke. I couldn't find anything to cause the noise, and started rolling the bike forward to ride again when I noticed this:
The sealant worked! There was no perceptible loss of pressure from the puncture.
Unfortunately, due to the size of the holes, I had to bend the nail out of the way and I rode a couple more miles fairly normally with a slow leak from the sidewall and everything performing admirably. Still, the leak was enough that I got low enough that I ended up popping the bead and coated the side of the tire with sealant.
I was able to vigorously hand pump it back up and re-seal the bead, then ride the last mile and a half back to the car on pavement with a "pfftt" sound every revolution.
This was a pretty extreme puncture, and I'm happy with how well the tubeless handled it. It didn't save me any time or effort over a tube in this case, but I'm quite convinced that my more typical punctures would be handled perfectly with this set-up, so I'm pretty happy in general.
