New Schwalbe Aerothan Tubes - a Tubolito competitor?

[Rnoben]

Replaced extra light butyl tubes with Aerothans on 1 bike in October and really like them.
I initially bought them to save some rotating weight, and do have the feeling that the bike accelerates faster.
However, for me the biggest difference is the amount of comfort the tubes offer (running them with 25mm gp5000 tires). It really feels like I'm riding a different bike!
So far no problems/flats (knock on wood).
So for me one of the best upgrades I have ever done.

[Yoln]

Yes good approach. Everyone should experience and come to their own conclusions.

Also, I'm still willing to give it more go's. I'm n=1, with only n=2 punctures. My next 10 could be a series of winning streaks. I'm still open minded to the notion that there could be some obvious user error on my part. Though, patching a tube should be pretty straightforward...

Sealing issues aside, they ride real nice.

Yeah. I know it's difficult to answer, but when you say "tiny needle", do you feel like you would have avoided the puncture using butyl?

[Keykey1985]

Yes good approach. Everyone should experience and come to their own conclusions.

Also, I'm still willing to give it more go's. I'm n=1, with only n=2 punctures. My next 10 could be a series of winning streaks. I'm still open minded to the notion that there could be some obvious user error on my part. Though, patching a tube should be pretty straightforward...

Sealing issues aside, they ride real nice.

Yeah. I know it's difficult to answer, but when you say "tiny needle", do you feel like you would have avoided the puncture using butyl?

I was under the impression that these were more resistant to punctures than butyl tubes, when I got a puncture I queried this with Schwalbe when asking them about the best way to patch a puncture. Their response was 'A thorn which is strong enough to get through a tyre will probably still cause a puncture'.

With that in mind I can't see how these can be any more resistant to punctures than a butyl tube. I feel a little bit cheated in that respect, especially when you consider I'm using the race endurance version in a 30mm tyre so not pushing the tube anywhere near to it's limits.

[usr]

I believe that Latex survives some foreign object intrusion incidents that butyl doesn't survive by just giving in more than butyl before rupturing. If the object is removed quick enough (e.g. a thorn still connected to the carrier shrub) so that it doesn't have hundreds of wheel revolutions to work against the material, the object will just poke into the toroid for a short while, temporarily altering its shape, but not breaking the surface.

I've had an amazing low puncture experience with latex, and after consulting the Schwalbe advertising materials for Aerothan that's my explanation for that experience. The advertising graphic regarding puncture resistance has two metrics, force until puncture and insertion depth until puncture. For butyl and "orange plastic competitor", the force results are quite consistent with the ones Tubolito uses to advertise their tube: Tubolito only has "force until puncture" (where Tubolito is good) on their site and their performance relative to butyl references is very similar to what Schwalbe is claiming for their "orange competitor". But the Schwalbe claims also have the "intrusion depth" metric where Latex dominates the other competitors. Tied with Aerothan, but that's certainly more susceptible to bias than the relative strengths amongst competitors. My puncture experience with Tubolito was rather bad, particularly when compared to latex, so I consider the "depth" metric (where according to Aerothan ads Latex is very good) far more important than the "force" metric (where Aerothan ads claim that Tubolito was already much better than anything before).

Do I trust the Aerothan ads about their own performance? Not really, but the consistence of of Schwalbe and Tubolito claims about relative performance between Tubolito and butyl in the "force" metric was enough for me to give Aerothan a chance. I gave up on Tubolito about a year earlier, at tube number ten or so. Still far from having gone the miles to give Aerothan a thumbs up, but a tactile comparison between the two plastics at least gave me the impression that their claim of higher similarity to latex than "the page one" might very well have some truth in it: on a tactile scale from "rubbery" to "somewhat bendable plastics", Aerothan feels closer to rubbery than Tubolito.

[maxim809]

Glad to hear others are having the same ride quality feel as me. It's like riding on a comfy couch, in a good way.

Regarding would I have punctured on Butyl?

Given the needle I pulled out and how it was embedded, absolutely. It was a super thin brush-like metallic thorn, penetrating deep through the tire. I wager every materials, TPU, Butyl, and Latex would have blown. Only tubeless could have hoped to survive (to those watching from the church of tubeless, I know, I know -- let's keep that debate out of this, LOL... I'm a fan of tubeless too).

IME, latex is the best at puncture resistance but ONLY for the scenario where a glass shard sits in the tire and barely penetrates through the skin of the tire. I've been amazed at how I can ride for ~50 miles with a shard embedded like that in the rear tire. I can flick the shard out with a fingernail, and see the latex tube through the tire walls right before they close up.

Hard to see the same happening with TPU, but I'll report back if I have that 'perfect' glass shard scenario and it holds up.

[Yoln]

Glad to hear others are having the same ride quality feel as me. It's like riding on a comfy couch, in a good way.

Regarding would I have punctured on Butyl?

Given the needle I pulled out and how it was embedded, absolutely. It was a super thin brush-like metallic thorn, penetrating deep through the tire. I wager every materials, TPU, Butyl, and Latex would have blown. Only tubeless could have hoped to survive (to those watching from the church of tubeless, I know, I know -- let's keep that debate out of this, LOL... I'm a fan of tubeless too).

IME, latex is the best at puncture resistance but ONLY for the scenario where a glass shard sits in the tire and barely penetrates through the skin of the tire. I've been amazed at how I can ride for ~50 miles with a shard embedded like that in the rear tire. I can flick the shard out with a fingernail, and see the latex tube through the tire walls right before they close up.

Hard to see the same happening with TPU, but I'll report back if I have that 'perfect' glass shard scenario and it holds up.

Better ride feel than latex you'd say?

[maxim809]

Equivalent.

Way better than Butyl.

[LOWIEV]

This might be a stupid question, but i'll ask it anyway.
Aerothan Race (for <28 mm tires) seems to be sold out in my go to online shops. They do still have the endurance version (for 28 mm tires and more).
I use sworks 26mm tires.
Would this be ok to use the endurance version with 26mm tires?

[tomtom]

Equivalent.

Way better than Butyl.

I noticed the same; much better ride quality but also had three(!) punctures in the last 1000km where I had almost none in the 10.000km before with butyl (and liquid latex). Combining with liquid latex & Aerothan is not(!) possible; it soldifies . Patching also seems impossible. I did not succeed with Schwalbe & Leyzyne patches. Did anyone have more luck?

[usr]

Bad Aerothan day today: noticed pressure loss on the rear wheel few minutes into the ride, then spent an hour repeatedly falling at achieving anything close to rideable pressure before stem thread failure (using "inboard valve" extensions). I strongly suspect that the initial flat was already a valve thread failure, caused by the pump hose on an angled chuck.

They should just mold that weird black "foot" onto an ultra short metal stem (like 10mm or so, with some corners/notches/crenellations for torque stability) that serves only as a base for extension even with the shallowest of rims. And call it a feature, lighter and more compact spare tubes.

Update: turns out it was a puncture. Time for the patchperiment! Lucky that it happened in walking distance when all spares fail. (and the time spent with my rear wheel made me discover an easily fixable issue with the EDCO cassette that hopefully solves a boatload of recent noise issues)