[Closed] Anyone ride tubs on their roadie?

They're a waste of time Imo, unless you're Racing where a puncture would end your race anyway.

Tubeless road is far more interesting these days.

i rode tubs on the road for about a year, just general riding, never had a puncture in that time so was never an issue

they wouldn't be my first choice, but if the mavics are cheap enough then why not?

Been using them on the summer bike for years.

Tufo 160 spare tub is not much bigger than an inner tube. Changing them is straight forward.

These days possibly the biggest advantage is that they allow the rims, and hence the wheels, to be lighter than the equivalent clinchers. They also sound cool!

I haven't ridden road tubeless though to compare.

Nope stupid idea, if they pop they pop and you are stuck. Gluing a new tub on in the wind and rain and cold is NO fun whatsoever.. I tried it about 5years ago and whilst riding they felt good but then here in Hampshire we have lots of Flint run off in the lanes and my initial "ohhh" turned into "Grrrr"
Clinchers with some Clement Strada LGG's are equally as good and imeasurably more relatable.

If you are racing, go ahead.

Best of luck if you think you'll fill em' with Stans too... 100+ psi will see it escape like silly string and you'll look like the party has left whilst standing on the side of the road..

If the wheels are cheap, buy em' try em' the only real way of assessing if they are any good for you is try em' innit.

All IMO of course.

Rode mine for a year puncture free carrying only Schwalbe sealant in case of puncture. They did indeed ride well but not massively better than good clinchers.Since experiencing good (Schwalbe one) road tubeless tyres, i would definitely not go back.

I ride Tufos in the summer on my fixed road bike. They ride well, but no better than latex inner tubes and good quality clinchers. Changing them can be a pfaff. Sealant makes them more practical than they used to be.

If you put your right hand up for a puncture and know a spare wheel is coming, then I'd say go for it 😉 . I'm planning on some for racing, but these would not be for general use.

Anyone recommend good road tubeless? Schwalb? Which one for general riding?
Impressed by my MTB tubeless.
TY

Just buy a pair of Veloflex Corsas from Ribble for £52 and enjoy the same ride quality as a tub but with all the ease of a clincher. Fantastic tyres; I will never go back to any other.

I'd only go tub if you're pairing with a light set of wheels. Carbon clinchers are often 200g+ lighter than an identical clincher. I wouldn't bother myself if you're buying a 1400g aluminium wheelset.

Unless you're racing at a very high level, with a following team car, and you're prepared to carry on riding on a flat tyre, possibly destroying a rim in the process until you can get a change then no.
As regarding lower weight, that's true, but by carrying a spare tub that advantage is wiped out.
Even carrying a spare tub, your ride could be ruined, because once you've changed your tub, what happens if you puncture again?
You're unlikely to borrow a tub from another rider, unlikely to be able to buy another enroute.
Unless you're going to unpick the tub, mend the tube, then sew up again, which is unlikely, then you're looking at replacing the tub every time you flat, which at £30 to £70 a time gets expensive!
Replacing a tub at the side of the road, even in good weather is a bad experience, it's a faff, always seems to have a wobble on it, and you're never confident its on securely
I've seen loads of tubs rolled of rims due to poor glueing, causing serious accidents,
Tyre technology has moved on so much, especially with road tubeless, that tubs are no longer the advantage they use to be.
I've ridden and raced on tubs for years, I'll never ride one again on the road!
The only place for tubs now is on the track, and cross racing, and that's slowly changing.
I ride with a few pros, from world tour, pro conti and conti level, you'll never see them on a tub unless there's a team car following them!

Just buy a pair of Veloflex Corsas from Ribble for £52 and enjoy the same ride quality as a tub but with all the ease of a clincher. Fantastic tyres; I will never go back to any other.

How durable are the Corsas? The weight is certainly impressive.

Veloflex Corsas aren't the toughest things in the world in comparison to say a GP4000S or a Pro4 but I'd agree with the above - much preferable to tubs for general riding. They don't quite have the feel of a top-notch tub like a Dugast or FMB but then nothing does! With latex tubes you get 95% of the performance with none of the tub faff.
I'd certainly only use tubs on the road for racing now that clinchers are so good (Pro4 grip on the winter bike, Pro4 on the summer bike, Corsas on my sunny day wheels).

Wow what a lot of opinion on this subject.

I run tubs across two pairs of wheels; one 60mm carbon race set (for TTs) and a set of classic box section alloy rims (Ambrosio Nemesis).

They have a number of advantages in my experience.

You can indeed make them lighter, especially carbon rims, which as Njee points out are a few hundred gramms lighter than an equivalent clincher.

They won't suffer from the issues of sudden failure from heat build up melting the glue (because there is nothing pushing out on the walls of the rim). This happened to a friend of mine in the Alps and it wasn't pretty.

They can be more comfortable and feel like they 'roll better' but you can get pretty close with a true 'open tubular' clincher tyre and a latext inner tube. I love my Nemesis in particular for this quality. The deep section carbons are quite stiff so the comfort is sacrificed a little, but the deep sections weigh 1400g (and that's for a 60mm deep rim!)

On the down side, yes punctures can be a worry but the idea that the only solution is to change the tub by the road side is not correct.

You can use this:

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It works just fine and will last a few months. You can also keep the inner tube topped up with Cafe Latex solution for a more long term solution or until the tub is worn and needs replacing.

Once you've punctured a tub you can get it repaired by sending it away to someone who does this. A quick google search of 'tub repair' will get you several examples.

The biggest downside is that this whole approach is definitely more costly than running clinchers. The pitstop can is about £6 so that's how much a puncture will cost you at the very least. A tub repair is about £15 plus postage. A latex inner tube is £10 so it's quite a bit cheaper to run open tubular clinchers and latext inner tubes.

It is however also true that you puncture less. On the carbons, which have done about 2000km, I've had no punctures. on the Nemesis over the winter and about 1200km it's one.

Fitting is very easy if you use Tufo tape:

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If you use glue it is far more of a faff. Tufo tape is more than good enough and takes maybe five minutes to fit a tub with it. You could also in theory take a roll of that and a spare tub for a very easy backup plan if for some reason the puncture was so bad the Pitstop didn't work.

I really don't care what anyone else says on this thread, I will always now have a set of tubs somewhere in the garage. I like them and I am sold on their virtues enough to keep them. But only you can decide if you want to go down that route.

What would be a good idea is to find a very cheap pair (as you may have already done) and see how you get on.

I switched to using tubs for road racing when I began to pick up too many pinch punctures. Lots of the Scottish road races were on really crappy single track roads where it was difficult to avoid potholes in a tight bunch. I switched to tubs to avoid these types of flats and never again punctured in a race. I wouldn't use them for training though - my wheels are too good and the tubs cost a fortune. Strictly for racing where a puncture would end my race and the chances of a pinch puncture are pretty high. They do feel great though.

I'm with geetee on this , I don't really see what the faff is when changing a flat over a clincher. I use both and prefer changing a tub if my fingers are cold and it's raining. That's if the pitstop hasn't worked (it sometimes doesn't).
Most of our Saturday group run tubs and I am not sure puncture stops take longer than with tubes.

But unless the op lives somewhere very hilly and wants the lightest wheels possible,I don't really see much point in changing. As mentioned, ride quality is pretty good with decent open tubs and latex tubes.

That's the other thing - cheaper, tougher tubs like Tufos or Sprinters give a worse ride quality than a good clincher so other than a small weight saving there's no gain on that front. To get the benefit you need to run something nicer, and that obviously costs more.
I'm certainly not anti-tub (6 pairs of tub wheels currently in my garage, albeit cyclocross ones) but road clinchers are so good now that the advantages are largely negated unless you run the very best.

I wore out a rear vittoria evo corsa tub within 2000km - clincher schwalbe one did over 5000km

I wore out a rear vittoria evo corsa tub within 2000km - clincher schwalbe one did over 5000km

Sure but I met you enjoyed every one of those 2000km on the Evo Corsas twice as much as the 5000km on the Schwalbe clinchers.

Being totally honest, I really like the look of the R-SYS wheels but can't really warrant their price tag. I don't do hundreds of miles a month or anything so seeing some on the classifieds (tubs) made me wonder how big a ball ache they actually were. Thanks for the feedback so far 😆

I wore out a rear vittoria evo corsa tub within 2000km - clincher schwalbe one did over 5000km

I found a similar thing with my Conti Competitions some years ago. Despite a very thorough gluing job (by a former pro-mechanic well versed in this) they migrated slightly so the base tape showed more on one side than t'other, they had a lump where the base tape over lapped, then they went flat on top very quickly indeed. Rivalling only GP Supersonics for (lack of) longevity.

I liked the light wheels, but it did sour me on tubs. Didn't flat though, and keep flirting with the idea of doing it again, but high wear does concern me slightly. Particularly as Competitions are billed as a fairly durable option.

Sure but I met you enjoyed every one of those 2000km on the Evo Corsas twice as much as the 5000km on the Schwalbe clinchers.

cannot tell the difference,

i can tell the difference between a decent clincher and a cheap one, say a conti ultra sport or whatever they are,

but a vittoria tub, to a schwalbe clincher, on a blind test, your lying to yourself if you think you can tell the difference

cannot tell the difference,

That's fair enough.

on a blind test, your lying to yourself if you think you can tell the difference

Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. You will never know and I will never care.

Continue Comp tubs seem to last forever for me. Front one has done well over 10,000 km, rears seem to last 4,000km or so. Only had one puncture, which was ironically a pothole pinch.

Conversely clinchers seem to wear out quickly, I've had less than a 1000km out of some.

Ymmv I guess!

I use tubular every day. At the moment Tufo S33.
Did not like the vitoroa pit stop. The Tufo version is much thicker. And I use jantex tape.