had a few annoying punctures.lots of people talking on here about tubeless tyres.is there only one type/principal and how does it work? i understand how a tubeless car tyre works but how do you inflate a bike tyre onto the rim with no tube?

No, there are several different systems. UST uses special rims and special UST tyres, there are other systems which employ rims strips and latex sealant, or ‘ghetto’ which makes a rimstrip out of a 20″ BMX tube and latex sealant.

Quite a lot of UST tyres about now from different manufacturers, though the Mavic 819 seems rim du jour.

Rimstrips, Stan’s are probably the most well known, DT make rim strips for their rims.

Ghetto requires sealant (either Stan’s or justridingalong.com or several others) and some 20″ BMX tubes with removeable valve cores, such as schwalbe tubes.

http://www.tubelesswheels.com/index.html

I DO THIS

UST is the real deal but it needs special rims and tyres that don’t leak. They tend to be a bit heavier and quite expensive to replace you existing ones. Not having tubes, you can run lower pressures without pinch flats. You can use some sealant to heal thorn punctures.

The same effect can be had cheaply by various conversions of normal tyres and rims (“Ghetto”) which are discussed endlessly on here. But people have varying degrees of success depending on their equipment, patience and luck. The JRA website is a good starting point for conversion kits.