Morning all.
The lanes, roads and trails down here at the moment seem littered with brambles and hawthorn twigs, and I'm fed up fixing punctures, so might try going tubeless for a while, see how I get on.
I already have tubeless rims, but a large stock of non-tubeless tyres. I've had a quick search, and can't find out if I need to use any sort of rim strip to get a non-tubeless tyre to work. Most people ghettoing are using rim strips on non-tubeless rims.
I'm happy to chuck a bit of sealant in there, but does any have any experience of this? I'd rather skip the rim strips and just bung the tyre on.
Also, I'd like to leave the Rocket Rons on for now, although the sidewalls are a bit thin. Any thoughts?
Ta
If you have tubelss rims and valves, you just put the milk in, pump it up and shake it around then leave it on its side, I sit it on a bucket, and leave it bubbling away for a few hours until it seals up. I sealed RRs before OK. Turn it over and shake it around and repump it if neessary every half hour.
Use plenty of soapy mix to help get it to seal on the when you pump it up - you will need a compressor or one of those inflator things, make sure you pump it right up so the bead pings into place and seal. Then use the spoapy to see where its bubbling out - and hence when it has sealed and stopped bubbling.
Once you get down to really micro fine bubbling on the sidewall bit nearest the bead I find it substantially holds pressure and can be used and just needs to be left overnight for the latex to cure.
Ghetto tubless can need topping up with air each week.
Look at the vids on the Stan's site, its really helpful
You might need strips to make the bead a tight fit so you can get it up ok. But not to seal it, so a couple of layers leccy tape would do.
Topping up once a week is fine - at the moment I need to repair and top up from flat one or twice a ride.... I think I just wasn't sure that a non-tubeless bead would seal well without a rim strip.
The Stan's site says:
# Without our rim strips, mounting a standard tire on a UST rim creates a poor interface, making it easier to burp air. Using our rim strips in tubeless rims creates a much stronger interface between the tire and rim. The interface is so strong there is No Air Loss even when a C-clamp is used to totally compress the tire sidewalls together! The side walls can be touching each other and the bead lock can be completely exposed with no air loss! Can your tubeless system pass this torture test?
I went 'full pikey' tubeless on my wife's Flow's as I had a few spare Mavic tubeless valves but didn't have the strips.
So I went with the electrical tape approach & it's worked fine, which surprised me.
The hard bit was getting normal tyres to seal - I ended up using a couple of gas canisters as it wasn't happening with the track pump.