Bud_Bent
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My tubeless experiment lasted almost two years. The roads I ride are so rough, I really wanted a better ride. I never got my Velocity A23's to reliably keep a seal for very long with any tubeless tire, so I built myself a set of ZTR Alpha 400's. When paired with Hutchinson tubeless tires, these are reliable. They also worked with Schwalbes. I used an Airshot to inflate the tires at home, but just carried a tube for the road. Using a tube inside a tubeless tire works fine, so is the quickest and simplest road repair, if you don't want to carry that Airshot beast on the road. A 700 x 23 Hutchinson Fusion, run at 80 psi, lasted over 3,000 miles on the front of the F-5, the most wear I've ever gotten out of any tire on any bike. I never had a single flat on either of the two Fusions I ran on the front. But I never got anything to hold up on the rear tire. And when I got a flat, it often took a boot to make the tire work well enough with a tube to get me home. I never seemed to keep a good enough seal to get home with any leak on the rear tubeless. Half the time, the damage from the leak would be so bad, I would have to scrap the tire, and go to my spare to get home. I never managed a full month of riding on any tubeless tire without a flat on the rear tire. The last six months I ran tubeless on the front, I had given up and was just running a tubed tire on the rear. Schwalbe Ones are faster than the Fusions, but didn't last as well. I also ran three Schwalbe Pro Ones (one was a warranty replacement), and never got 300 miles out of any of them, not even on the front of the bike. That's why I recommended against them earlier in this thread. They would quickly develop sizable knots on my rough roads, knots that would give a noticeable thump as I rode, and they flatted often, too. As I mentioned earlier, my roads are rough. Many of my miles are also on highway shoulders which are full of steel bits from truck tires. So my experiences may not match yours. My A23 wheels are wide enough that I'm able to run GP 4000's on them at 80 psi without pinch flats. They don't ride quite as well as the tubeless, but not bad, and they're fast. They hold up well when they're new, but seem to lose their flat resistance over time, so I usually only get 1,000 to 1,500 miles out of the rear tire. But I think that's what I'm going to keep on running, at least for now. When someone comes up with a 700 x 25 (my preferred size on the rear) tubeless tire that's reasonably fast, but will hold up on my tough roads, maybe I'll reconsider tubeless.
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