I have a set of zipp 404 discs, they are 2018 model year wheels
Could they be converted to tubeless with tape/sealant or with road wheels do they have to be 'tubeless ready' to safely hold the bead of the tyre?
cheers
Tubeless ready, I love road tubeless but not sure the positives outweigh the negatives involved if using a ghetto solution.
I've converted a few road rims to tubeless, including carbon ones, and not had any issues. Just tape and go. To me 'ghetto' implies using a cut innertube as a rimstrip, which isn't quite what the OP is suggesting.
On carbon you need a good sticky tape though, and a very clean rim.
The Schwalbe road tyres claim to work fine on most regular rims, and only have a problem with ones with a very low rim depth (Stan's IIRC).
I think other brands are similar.
The thing I find is that for my commuter (700c), skinny 25mm road tyres running tubeless can't cope with the beating they take from Cambridgeshire roads, and I keep ending up with unsealable dead tyres. Much beefier tyres are fine.
Whereas on my road bike, on the same roads, 25mm tubeless tyres are fine. I don't quite understand this.
From a safety point of view you really need tubeless ready rims and tyres for road. Can you imagine it burping or blowing doing 40mph down a hill surrounded by cars and tarmac? Tubeless tyres have less stretchy beads which is required and cant be fixed with a ghetto setup, and the rim needs the right profile to hold the bead in place.
I’ve been running road tubeless on non-specific rims and tyres for over 4 years.
I’ll admit that with the advent of proper tubeless road tyres, it’s substantially easier to do. The rims (tubeless or not) don’t make much difference so long as the sidewall isn’t too tall.
