Tubeless tires

I’ve been having absolute nightmare with tubeless tires on my new gravel bike

All my mountain bikes and my wife’s bikes are tubeless. I’ve never had a problem until now

I have been trying to get 700 c rims to seal and I just don’t seem to be able to do it. I have tried muc off, peatys and gaffer tape. No matter what I do I get air coming out of the spoke holes. Not all of the spoke holes just 1 or 2.

As far as I am aware the tire should seal and be airtight without sealant inside it? It shouldn’t rely on sealant to remain airtight should it? Sealant is there to plug up holes in the tire not to help it seal against the rim – at least once you popped the bead you shouldn’t be able to hear air pissing out of the spoke holes

I have just stripped and cleaned the rim three times this evening and in desperation tried gorilla tape (the half width stuff) and still I can’t get a clean seal.

Before I go back to tubes, does anybody have any suggestions? Peatys tape was 25mm the gorilla type about the same or a millimetre bigger. Should I just get some bigger tape and give it one more try?

The eternal width of 23 mm so I presume 28mm would be too big?

By the way, between every single attempt I have cleaned the rim down with both label cleaner and then also isopropyl alcohol. I’ve used a cotton swab (many cotton swabs) to get into every single Nook and crevice

*tyres

Tape them and then stick a tube in the tyre, pump up and leave for a day or 2.

Take the tube out and refit the tyre.

Don’t forget to overlap the tape by about a half of the wheel diameter (if the valve hole is at 12 o’clock start taping at 9 and finish at 3 after a full rotation).

As you say the sealant is there to fix holes, might be punctures but can just as well be shitty tyre walls.

What Shoko said, except just leave the tube in.

Also, what Alpin said.

If the latest attempt has gone down by the morning I think I will just go back to tubes. On my mountain bikes I’ve never had a problem, these WTB rims just do not want to seal. The factory supplied and fitted tape also leaked!

St23 rims?

Completely flat overnight?

If they are just losing a fair amount of air overnight but not going completely flat then try riding them. I’ve had 700c tyres take a couple of weeks to fully seal. If the taping isn’t the culprit then the valve hole might be. Use a soldering iron or a hot metal pick to make the hole really smooth at the edges and get some decent valves.

Thank you. I will give that a go

They aren’t going completely flat, but they’re going very squishy to the touch

Chuck some sealant in and go for a ride.

Chuck some sealant in and go for a ride.

This.

Tubeless tyres are amazing things when they work, but an absolute pain in the arse if they don’t.

I’ve had sets of tubeless tyres inflate with no sealant and stay up for days. Then lasted months of hard riding without any issues, and when it was time to replace them due to wear, you see umpteen thorns and blobs of dried sealant where they’ve self sealed.

I’ve also had tyres that were a fight to even get on the rim, then after much swearing, sweating, thumb torturing and breaking a tyre lever two, still refuse to sit square on the rim. On more than one occasion, I’ve destroyed a brand new tubeless tyre with a snake bite that would not seal, despite how many repairs tried. This is not even mentioning the sealant stains on my clothes that do not come out, from when I got a puncture which then preceded on spraying sealant up me on every rotation.

Note:- some tyres will just not seal on some rims, from my experience.

I’m beginning to wonder why I bother with tubeless!

Oh yeah, I remember now…… I’ve only had one puncture in the last 12 months, across 5 bikes and a fair few miles, and this was fixed with a plug at the side of the trail without having to take the wheel out or removal of the tyre.

I think you said that you hadn’t put sealant in yet and they are going down overnight.

So they are holding for an hour or two?

That sounds fine.

Add sealant. Stop worrying.  They’ll hold pressure absolutely fine.

My experience of tubeless is one way or another it becomes managed leakage… My MTB weeps sealant out the sidewalls but hold 25-30psi, gravel wheels, front goes completely flat after a week, rear drops to 10psi. Road wheels hold 40psi for ever but 65psi lasts a ride.

All need pumping up to pressure to use and are fine, and have averted numerous punctures, particularly the road tyres judging by the dried sealant I regularly clean off the frame..

Do the rims have drain holes between rim cavity and rim bed, i’ve seen some box section rims with that.

And no, tyres won’t necessarily seal without sealant, the lighter they are, the less likely it is!

But air going out the spoke holes says it’s a problem with the rim/taping, not the tyre.

Tape them and then stick a tube in the tyre, pump up and leave for a day or 2.

Take the tube out and refit the tyre.

I had tubeless running fine with both tyres going straight up with track pump but then built up a new wheel and the same tyre would just not inflate at all on the new rim.

Gave up and put tube in.  Got puncture so thought why not just try tubeless again.  Put in tubeless valve and tyre inflated immediately just with a track pump.

Whether that was luck of whether running with a tube did something (sealed tape, formed tyre to rim) but whatever it was it worked.

If I have a tyre that goes up but deflates over a shortish time I do just put sealant in and go for a ride as others have said and that always works.

I have had more issue with gravel tyres & wheels than I ever did with MTB’s over the best part of 20 years.

I think it’s because of the flimsiness of the tyres & slimness of the rims vs stiff & wide MTB equivalents.

What tyres are they, and are they new?

Also they usually do need a ride to ‘seat’ them better.

Another vote for chuck some sealant in.

The only time I’ve had air noticably leak through spoke holes is when the shop monkey had obviously stuggled to get the tyre back on (they were correcting their botched wheel build for me) and had gouged through two layers of yellow tape with whatever they were using! Subsequently they couldn’t get the tyre to inflate, gave up and handed it back to me.

If there’s a significant problem with your taping you’ll see the sealant pissing out the spoke holes as happened when I got home.

I had loads of trouble with one tubeless gravel wheel.

Front went up with gorilla tape 0 problems.

Rear would not seal.

After much huffing and puffing the solution was Tesla tape.

Tubes worked fine and so still work fine. My commuter is on paracetamol gravel kings with tubes and has had 2 punctures in 800 miles.

Sling some sealant in them . Not the Muc Off  or Peatys that you have   IME they are 2 of the worst sealants known to man  . Try Stans

Eventually I put slime in them and then pumped them up and went for a ride

That was 24 hrs ago and they seem fine !

Thanks all

paracetamol gravel kings

I bet they never give you a headache

I put slime in them

Oh dear, that’ll be a pain to get out once it dries in a big lump like slime always does.

Sealant and a few miles riding around the block would have sorted it.

I don’t know why people get so wound up about this “but it won’t seal so I won’t put any sealant in it”. This school of thought must have developed in the years when I was absent from biking, which was a period that began somewhat after ghetto tubeless, and now my absence seems to have ended around now which is, what, Waitrose tubeless?

just put some sealant in and go for a ride. Literally the best medicine.

A lot of road/gravel tyres are intended to run with sealant, and have fairly thin/porous side walls. If you can get them to seat, they’re holding a good enough seal, but you’ll need sealant in them to hold air for any length of time.

I don’t know why people get so wound up about this “but it won’t seal so I won’t put any sealant in it”.

I like tyres to have demonstrated they can be seated first, at least. That’s better than cleaning up all the resulting mess if it turns out there was no chance of it ever holding air.

I like tyres to have demonstrated they can be seated first, at least. That’s better than cleaning up all the resulting mess

ok, hasn’t happened to me yet, which probably means I’ll be eating my words before long.

Is the valve seating and sealing in the rim well properly? Conical rubber ones work quite well but some challels require a specific shape of valve… I’m looking at you, Mavic.

Aah last question then – slime and tyre sealant aren’t tbe same thing ? So I would be best getting the slime out and swapping it now whilst it’s still vaguely liquid ?

I said up there that a previous failure just worked on second attempt after putting tube in.  Was fine when riding on Sunday.  Checked tyre yesterday and it was flat.

Yes it has sealant, yes it was ridden.  Pumped up again and will see what happens.

This is all with a Hutchinson Challenger TR tyre which states that no sealant is required to hold air and only required to seal any punctures

quentynFull Member
Aah last question then – slime and tyre sealant aren’t tbe same thing ? So I would be best getting the slime out and swapping it now whilst it’s still vaguely liquid ?

Just buy a big bottle of Stans, then you’ve spare to top up in 3 months.