I’ve had some large pieces of metal take out a chunk of tire, and DynaPlug road plug was perfect. But too often they are too big on a road tire. So I’m now carrying bacon and KOM Cycling tool.
I feel I should mention that I sprung a random leak in the sidewall of one of my MTB tires (or was it both tires?) a while back, but adding new sealant seems to have more or less solved that issue. If the same leak keeps popping up, I will try patching it.
It’s pretty simple. Clean the area around the leak with a bit of solvent, apply rubber cement, let it dry a bit, and then mash the patch on. It’s just like patching a tube, except you can probably get away with not scuffing it, since the interior of tubeless tires is much rougher than the surface of an innertube.
I do wonder if the patches hurt my rolling resistance, though…
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i’m in this position 3 months into road tubeless. i’m using silca fibrous sealant, which did seal to get me home, but lost probably 30 psi overnight. i have a tiny hole.
i’m going to try an internal patch, and if it doesn’t work, a tube. tyres are way too expensive to relace early.
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Patching works fine. The problem is that anything larger than a microscopic hole is unlikely to be permanently fixed by sealant. Even below 75 psi. Eventually you get tired of pulling to tires off to patch them… I’m going to look into getting a plug kit with reasonable refills.
As an alternative, I just I tried smearing some RTV silicone on a small sidewall tear (caused by bottoming out because of other leaks) and that seems to work as well as using patches. Though it’s only been a few hours.
This might be the go-to for anything that is really small but sealant won’t fix. You don’t really save any time compared to patches, but it adds less weight to the tire and probably affects rolling resistance less.
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Problem is, it gets very expensive and that is one of the many drawbacks of tubeless, it makes you buy a tyre again far more quickly than with tubes. I have run Pirelli Cinturato Velo on my winter / all rounder Defy for years, both tubeless, then tubed and then back to tubeless, what looked like a perfectly good tyre today picked up two cuts that won’t seal. I will be binning the tubeless valve and putting a tube in, as you say - not helped by my 180lbs weight due to my 6’3” frame. I tried, but it’s not meant to be and it is tubes again all the way for me…
Agree, and it forces you into buying a new tyre too quickly.
Take a tip, in most of the 18k miles my Defy has covered, it has been on Pirelli Cinturato Velo , I had less issues and longer serving tyres running them tubed than tubeless.
Just run tubes, I learnt the hard way and know now not to bother with tubeless ever again…
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Hah. I just checked and it was 10 years ago that I was running tubeless on the road bike. Sealing punctures was iffy back then and I’ve run tubes since. I was wondering if things have improved since then. I do run tubeless on the mtb and gravel bike, but those are much lower pressure.