I am venturing down the road tubeless path and wondered who else has done the same and thought we should have a thread to share the good and the bad.
So far it’s been a pain in the butt trying to get Schwalbe Pro Ones to play nice on Prime carbon rims. More details when I’m not on mobile
Schwalbe Pro Ones on Giant SLR wheels seated with a floor pump, easy peasy.
Think there is an older thread around here… my experience is that too easy is a potential safety issue. There is some technique in putting on a tubeless tire. Once you know how it’s been straightforward to strong thumb every tire onto my Enve 5.6 disc rims.
I have the bike shop do it 
Overall – I love road tubeless. Huge fan.
I’ve been running road tubeless for years. Doubt I’ll ever go back to tubes.
I’m running tubeless for all riding - road, gravel, mountain, and snow. It takes a few reps to get proficient setting up tubeless. The biggest challenge is probably getting the rim tape right - with the right thickness to take up any slack between the tire and rim to allow for an easier seal, and full adherence to the rim with no leaks.
The main reason I went tubeless on the road was because I’d sometimes go on sections of gravel, and wanted to avoid pinch flats. No problems so far.
I’m on a business trip in the Albuquerque area right now and push came to shove up after my first ride, had to toss the Coursas and make a switch. So I did Bontrager AW2 28’s on a DT 460 rim. They’ve been great for about 150 miles, going to keep them for sure.
My girlfriend rides a Mavic wheel with a Mavic tubeless tire that I set up, went on easy. When I burn through what I have left of the Vittoria Corsa I will hopefully use their new tubeless Corsa.
Love them new… anything else (swapping / repair) is the work of the devil. YouTube thought my most recent video on swapping/installing tubeless was so frustrating they removed all monetisation from it (and sank it because they refused to attach advertisements to it). YouTubeless.
Anyhow - the 25mm GP5000 TL I have on the Giant TCR are going well after 1000km.
Schwalbe Pro-Ones 28’s Tubeless always on the rode.
+1
Over 5k miles on Panaracer race a tubeless and no flats. 25 mm smooth, measure 24.8 mm mounted on Reynolds assaults and I take them on dirt roads without issue. They are super tough, but will try Conti 5000TL soon for the lower watts - worried whether they will break the aero profile though as Continentals are always wide. Won’t go back to tubes - averaged 2-3 flats a year before. They are a pain to setup but prefer to deal with it in my garage vs side of road. I carry dynaplug tool for bikes as well but have never had a need to try them yet.
25mm Schwalbe Pro-Ones on (converted) non-tubeless Dura-Ace C24s for me. Been running road tubeless for years. I’ll try the new Contis next I think.
Used mine a couple of times after a large cut by chunk of metal or glass. Works. On the other hand I’ve had a handful of sidewall tears, evenly split between tubes and tubeless. Nothing is perfect but tubeless is seriously awesome.
I’ve gone tubeless on my race wheels and love it. Ride quality is great. Getting the tyres on is a pain so I pay the labour and ask the bike shop to do it.
I had the same issues putting on gp4000s2 on prime rims, there are a few techniques where you push the bead in the middle and you can thumb the tire over really easily. I had to use soapy water to seat the bead. Can’t say anything on the tubeless thing because the contis I had still had life in them. Will order 5000TL after I burn these.
Now that I am at my laptop, I cannot get mine to hold air. I am using 700x25c Schwalbe Pro ones and Prime rims, Muc Off 60mm valves.
Man they are tight to get on “Tubeless Easy”, yeah sure. I really didn’t think I was going get them on but it did eventually. Trying to get bead to seat to was the next test. They were so tight that the bead on wouldn’t “pop” out of the rim channel. Using a compressor I could get it to sort of do it but as soon as the pressure let off, the bead would slip back down into the channel. I believe now is that I wasn’t inflating it hard enough to seat it on the bead so it would slip back.
Using some soapy water around the bead, there’s a re few places where it is leaking, I kept working the sealant around the inside and things start to seal up but it is leaking around the valve. Now I can get it inflated to 100 psi, but there is an undetectable leak and it is flat in a couple of hours. I keep hoping that it will seal but it’s not looking that way. I don’t know if I should add some more sealant and keep working around or take the tire off (not really looking forward to that struggle) and adding a gasket or more tape around the valve hole.
Any suggestions, and best practices to make installations go ore smoothly.
Probably not worth the effort but it depends on why you want to go tubeless. If it’s to avoid pinch flats or other puncture hazards it’s probably worth trying. If you are going tubeless to capture some rolling resistance gains it will be a bunch of faffing about for nothing. Just slam some latex tubes in there…it’s the same improvement.
Unless it’s race day & you want to roll the dice with next to no sealant in the tires. Which is something to consider if you need that extra couple of watts!
I learned that leaks by valve stem can be deceptive and can be tape failure elsewhere that just escapes at that point - this happened to me and I redid rim table and all was good. When I did so I found sealant had gotten under the old tape and was working its way quite some distance to exit by valve stem.
I also have a 6 gallon air tank that I charge with a mini compressor to 100 psi. You can also charge these tanks at a gas station. They are cheap. This gives a very powerful fast shot of air that overwhelms the tire to pop it on. A compressor without a tank already at pressure will have a tough time, but an air tank and mini compressor are simple for cases where you don’t need ongoing heavy supply of air and just small shots at high pressure. (I used it for a nail gun)
Finally, I use a little dilute dish soap in water applied with toothbrush to inside and outside of bead and rim edge which sounds like you’re doing. That helps a ton.
I watched your vid with equal parts amazement and sympathy. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky, but I’ve been using road tubeless since the start of 2012 and I’ve probably had fewer issues in that whole time than you had in that one video. I regularly swap tyres over between wheels (I’ve currently got schwalbe g-one 35mm, schwalbe 33mm x-ones, and hutchinson 28mm sectors on rotation across 3 wheelsets and 2 bikes, dependent on what sort of riding I want to do and what bike I want to use). I’d certainly agree that refitting is a much more challenging process, but it still rarely takes me more than 10 minutes using fresh sealant each time and a Beto tubeless air-tank inflator (whereas most new tyres you can get away with just using a track pump). I’m thinking that I’ve just been really lucky with my tyre/rim combinations.
On the rare occasion that the sealant hasn’t dealt with a puncture while out riding I’ve not had any real issues with simply sticking in a new tube - it’s a little messier than swapping tubes if you’re not careful but only takes a minute longer. I’ve then been able to patch the tyres from the inside when I got home and set them back up as tubeless with no real issues. I’ve not experimented with plugging punctures - as a roadie with no mtb experience that still fees a bit alien.
Ps… I should mention I suspect the tape failure came after leaving bike in really hot car in sun for hours. Redid the blue Reynolds tape with some giant tape from lbs and it seemed to be way better tape and no issues since.