Lightweight tubes and tires vs lightweight tubeless tires

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naavt
Posts: 529
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:58 pm

by naavt

BigBoyND wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 8:44 pm
Veloflex Corsa Race TLR is tan and very light for the tire protection it offers (see BRR). ~220g vr 300g for most others in the same category like GP5k.

Light tubed will be lighter than light tubeless unless you skip the sealant or use heavy tubes.
Another option that I'm looking into right now and it really seems a winner. Thanks!

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naavt
Posts: 529
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by naavt

taladjidi wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:38 am
BigBoyND wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 8:44 pm
Veloflex Corsa Race TLR is tan and very light for the tire protection it offers (see BRR). ~220g vr 300g for most others in the same category like GP5k.

Light tubed will be lighter than light tubeless unless you skip the sealant or use heavy tubes.
:beerchug: I've been running them tubeless for almost 1200km now and am very happy with them. I've had one rear puncture (but I was searching for it rolling on a very bad gravel road at 30kph) and plugged it no problem to ride home. I did have to patch the tire later because the plug was slowly sliding out. Otherwise I've been really surprised at how sturdy these tires are given how thin they feel (I also commute with them and the Paris quays are littered with glass shards). Finally the price here in France is really good, like 45€ a tire which for a tubeless tire handmade in Italy is very fair !
I initially tried the Schwalbe Pro One TT's and they didn't last 200k (tubeless with Stan's Sealant)...
Went to see the Veloflex option after @BigBoyND post. They really seem the best option so far and your comment adds up to it. Have seen on Veloflex's website that my usual sealant won't work (Orange Seal Endurance). I'm using OS for some time now since it's a breeze to peel off dried sealant when you want to.

Are you using Stan's on yours Veloflex?

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MarshMellow
Posts: 158
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by MarshMellow

Regardless what tire, or source of inflation, have this one more point lending itself to tubes offering the most benefit overall.

When having ridden AL frames, had discovered using the wheel-truing stand plus a set of oversized, open sealed bearings w/ no lube makes for a very sensitive balance apparatus. Finding a areas of a tube and tire needing 1 ~ 2 ~ 3.5g of weight to radial balance the wheel and tire was a reward. Carbon bikes, the sensation is muted a bit but is not overlooked.

Do you have to do it? No, you don't. Tubulars would be a little messy, tubeless has a bunch of wet stuff insides. But, is something which can be done and takes only one ride to recognize the function it serves.
RimClencher wrote:
Tue Apr 15, 2014 10:56 am
That's your own fault for riding with no clothes on.

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MarshMellow
Posts: 158
Joined: Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:47 pm

by MarshMellow

Regardless what tire, or source of inflation, have this one more point lending itself to tubes offering the most benefit overall.

When having ridden AL frames, had discovered using the wheel-truing stand plus a set of oversized, open sealed bearings w/ no lube makes for a very sensitive balance apparatus. Finding area or areas of a tube and tire needing 1 ~ 2 ~ 3.5g of weight to radial balance the wheel and tire was a reward. Carbon bikes, the sensation is muted a bit but is not overlooked.

Do you have to do it? No, you don't. Tubulars would be a little messy, tubeless has a bunch of wet stuff insides. But, is something which can be done and takes only one ride to recognize the function it serves.
RimClencher wrote:
Tue Apr 15, 2014 10:56 am
That's your own fault for riding with no clothes on.

naavt
Posts: 529
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:58 pm

by naavt

Ok!
Bought 2 Veloflex Race with Gum sidewalls. Have seen that they are trickier with sealant so emailed Veloflex about that and they have replied me in already.

They've told me that Orange Seal is fine but some users reported that the Gum walls have tinted more orange with the OS sealant.

Any experience with this issue?

taladjidi
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Paris, France

by taladjidi

naavt wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:53 am
Are you using Stan's on yours Veloflex?
I started a bit paranoid with Stan's Race sealant (after my bad experiences with Schwalbe pro one TT's) and the topped up with Stan's regular sealant. Stan's race is a bit complicated to set up as you cannot feed it through the valve hole though ... Never had any problem with the sealant creeping through the sidewalls as I have seen in other threads.

edchristoph
Posts: 110
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:40 am

by edchristoph

naavt wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:34 pm
Ok!
Bought 2 Veloflex Race with Gum sidewalls. Have seen that they are trickier with sealant so emailed Veloflex about that and they have replied me in already.

They've told me that Orange Seal is fine but some users reported that the Gum walls have tinted more orange with the OS sealant.

Any experience with this issue?
I am using Velofelx Corsa TLR (both Race and Evo) since they came out. To say it clear, due to their cotton-type casing they require more maintenance and are trickier to deal with than their vulcanized rubber counterparts from Schwalbe, Conti, Michelin, and the likes. Since the casing is permeable, it requires the sidewalls to be saturated with a certain amount of sealant to achive an airtight sealing. This is especially confusing for people coming from vulcanized rubber TLR tires, where sealant (apart from fixing punctures) may be needed to get an airtight seal between rim edge and tire bead. So with the Corsas you will see the sidewall soaking up more and more sealant and eventually some small spots where sealant is bleeding through the sidewall.

While this is the expected behaviour, this has three significant consequences:
1) Colored sealant like Orange will dye your gum sidewalls becoming darker
2) Sidewalls becoming sticky thus attracting dirt and dust
3) It's near impossible to re-fit a used Corsa tire to a different wheel, or same wheel after, e.g., re-taping it as the sidewalls are drenched with sticky latex sealant

While #1 and #2 are "just" aesthetics, #3 is a true pain as you simply cannot re-seat a used tire since its sidewalls are sticking together which prevents the tire beads from popping out of the center channel against the edge of the rim even with an air-shot pump.

Why am I still using them? Specially for the Corsa Race, I love the way they ride and the very confidence inspiring grip level they provide both dry and wet.

TobinHatesYou
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by TobinHatesYou

If you're having puncture problems with Schwalbe Pro Ones, you're probably not going to have a good time with Veloflex Corsas. Take care of those sidewalls because a couple people on this forum have had catastrophic failures with them. They also aren't that supple unless you underinflate them...they have what amounts to an inner "tread" lining the center of the tire.

And if you're choosing something other than Orange Seal because it might make your tires less pretty, then you deserve to be stuck on the side of the road. The only reason not to use it is if you don't have easy access. Stan's regular is considerably worse. Stan's Race still won't seal some of the punctures Orange Seal handles, doesn't last as long and has the Stanimals issue.

taladjidi
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Paris, France

by taladjidi

edchristoph wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:52 pm
3) It's near impossible to re-fit a used Corsa tire to a different wheel, or same wheel after, e.g., re-taping it as the sidewalls are drenched with sticky latex sealant
While I noticed that the sidewalls were sticking together, I managed to fix my puncture and remove and refit the tire twice with just a floor pump with a Corsa Race TLR. I agree however that they are substantially trickier to deal with than Schwalbes or (best tubeless fitting experience I tried for road tires) Hutchinson. It's worth noting that this may depend quite wildly on the tire/rim interface which has a huge impact with tubeless tires. For what it's worth, I'm running Farsports Feder 55mm rims. But in the end the smoothness is well worth it !

taladjidi
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Location: Paris, France

by taladjidi

TobinHatesYou wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 5:46 pm
If you're having puncture problems with Schwalbe Pro Ones, you're probably not going to have a good time with Veloflex Corsas. Take care of those sidewalls because a couple people on this forum have had catastrophic failures with them. They also aren't that supple unless you underinflate them...they have what amounts to an inner "tread" lining the center of the tire.

And if you're choosing something other than Orange Seal because it might make your tires less pretty, then you deserve to be stuck on the side of the road. The only reason not to use it is if you don't have easy access. Stan's regular is considerably worse. Stan's Race still won't seal some of the punctures Orange Seal handles, doesn't last as long and has the Stanimals issue.
I run them at 6.8/6.2 bars (rear/front) in 25mm and they feel quite a lot more supple than any other tire I tried (Schwalbe One/Pro One/Pro One TT, Hutchinson Sector ...). But I guess it's a bit subjective and subject to a lot of "placebo effect". On the puncture side, I found them significantly more resistant than the Pro Ones, but maybe is it a statistical fluctuation ? I never tried Orange Seal, what makes it that much better than the Stan's ?

edchristoph
Posts: 110
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:40 am

by edchristoph

taladjidi wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 7:18 pm
edchristoph wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:52 pm
3) It's near impossible to re-fit a used Corsa tire to a different wheel, or same wheel after, e.g., re-taping it as the sidewalls are drenched with sticky latex sealant
While I noticed that the sidewalls were sticking together, I managed to fix my puncture and remove and refit the tire twice with just a floor pump with a Corsa Race TLR. I agree however that they are substantially trickier to deal with than Schwalbes or (best tubeless fitting experience I tried for road tires) Hutchinson. It's worth noting that this may depend quite wildly on the tire/rim interface which has a huge impact with tubeless tires. For what it's worth, I'm running Farsports Feder 55mm rims. But in the end the smoothness is well worth it !
What tire width are you running and what is the inner width of your Farsports?

In my case, I am running 25mm Corsas on Lightbicycle AR55 Falcon Pro with 21mm inner width. Even with brand new Veloflex tires, that combo is somewhat tricky to setup as the cotton sidewalls always tend to collapse into the centerchannel of the rim - the uninflated tire is building out a triangular shape with the tread being flat on the rim and the sidewalls folding backwards under the tread into the centerchannel. Btw, I have that same behaviour when mounting 25mm Vittoria Corsa 2.0 TLR onto a 21mm inner width rim.

When uninflated, TLR tires with cotton casings simply don't maintain the rounded shape of an inflated tire like vulcanized rubber tires do. They are just flat. Seems to be the price you have to pay for the suppleness of these tires. Adding that setting up a 25mm tire on a 21mm inner width rim is a close call.

However, after having the tire sitting on the wheel for a couple of months the inner sidewalls are getting very sticky from soaking up the latex of the sealant (I am using Joe's No Flats Super Sealant as per Veloflex' recommendation). In my case when the inner beads of the tire (i.e., the very lower end of the sidewalls) are touching each other while sitting uninflated in the centerchannel of the rim, they just stick together enough to prevent the airshot pushing them over the shoulder of the rim to create the very initial seal before the beads are then popping into their final position at the rim edge with increasing pressure.

On the other hand, I haven't had any flats with them in >10k km, so I just leave them on the wheel until they need to be replaced.

taladjidi
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Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Paris, France

by taladjidi

I'm running 25 mm Corsa Race TLR on a 19mm internal width rim. Yes they are tricky to set up and I also witnessed all of the observations you made. However I did notice some "hacks" that made the setup simpler while using an airshot : if you press around over the valve area with your thumb while inflating, this forces the air to push the beads apart and greatly improves the chances of popping the bead right on. Since using this "hack" I never had any issue setting them up. Before I got the airshot, I had to use a tire lever to manually put the bead on the rim which was a real hastle. I imagine on a 21mm internal rim, this must be even trickier. On my rims the tire / rim transition is perfect since the inflated tire measures up to 26mm which is the outside width of my rims.

GS100
Posts: 256
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:00 pm

by GS100

Used Corsa Speed's since gen 1 and they are excellent with regards to weight, feel, dry grip, rolling resistance. Never punctured. Gen 2 rolls slightly better as far as I can tell (though going from worn out G+ to a fresh G2.0 may explain this..) Their application as tubless seems a bit flawed though as per this thread and others.

Re punctures - I would never use them on the rear - asking for trouble IME but YMMV as I'm over 80 kg. Also a very expensive hobby if, like me, you're on tubulars and you puncture!

MikeD
Posts: 1000
Joined: Thu Dec 11, 2014 9:55 pm

by MikeD

MikeD wrote:
TobinHatesYou wrote:
MikeD wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 2:13 am

It works until it doesn't.

Tubes work until they don't. Tubulars work until they don't. Oversimplifications and generalizations work until they don't.

100% of my tubeless punctures this year have sealed.
Having to put a tube in and dealing with the mess is what I'm getting on about. On my mountain bike, I can't break the bead free from the rim on the front tire. Any suggestions here?
Funny, I put new sealant in and after a couple of weeks, the bead popped free. Could it be the new sealant softened the old, dried up sealant so that the bead could be pushed aside? That's what I'm thinking.

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neeb
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by neeb

I simply have no incentive to try tubeless. I get a puncture less often than once every 1500 miles (usually a pinch flat from bottoming out on a particularly bad unnoticed pothole) - 10 minutes swapping the tube and that's it.

I use latex tubes, which with clinchers are effectively just as fast as tubeless.

Why should I bother with tubeless? I even find the idea of it faintly repsulsive, all of that goo, and never quite knowing how much is in there or what it's doing.. I also like swapping tyres about for different purposes. Sounds as if that would be a bit of a hassle with tubeless..

by Weenie


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