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Touring tube, or race tube with slime...?
I'm running Conti GP4000sII tires and very happy with them. I don't puncture too often but have generally used heavy-ish tubes with the assumption that this is a good thing to avoid punctures. Thing is, even a thick tube is still soft rubber and surely offers very little resistance to a pin, shard or thorn that's made it through the vectran, so I wonder if going for a lighter tube with slime might offer better protection at the same weight, and maybe ride better.
Slime say a road tube should use 1.5oz of slime (43g) for puncture resistance. A lightweight road tube like a Conti 28 weighs 50g, so 93g for the pair. Same as a good set of touring tubes more or less.
So which option offers the best ride, the best puncture resistance and the lowest rolling resistance...?
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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Update 2:
Another puncture this weekend, this one was again caught by the slime. Presure dropped and I noticed it but I had chance to get off and top it up with CO2 before I pinch punctured. Holding presure fine again now and no sign of the foreign object, so I'm assuming it was something that pricked the tube then flew straight out.
When I got back the tyre was at 60 psi, I normally ride at 90. I let down the tyre and re-inflated it several times over to reduce the CO2 percentage to hopefully around normal as I'm worried this would affect the slime. We'll see!
I'm calling a halt to the 'experiment' now and switching to winter tyres as it's so wet and dirty this month that I just don't think the GP4000sII are up to the job, slime or no slime. I'll keep the same tubes in my winter tyres though (Continental Grand Prix). In summer I'm probably going to go back to this setup unless I've bitten the bullet and gone tubeless by then.
Update:
It's 2 months later and quite a lot of wet and dirty winter miles put in, so I thought I'd report back. I've had two punctures in that time - one that the slime repaired and one that was apparently too big (destroyed the tyre).
The first one I only noticed because the trye went completely flat overnight after I'd come back from the ride. No sealant had seeped out but apparently once the wheel stopped spinning and the sealant was drained from the hole (thorn was at the top), the amount that had already dried there was not enough. I found the thorn, pulled it out, spun the wheel, pumped it up, heard hissing, spun it again till the hissing stopped, pumped it up again, then it was fixed and was never an issue again. Happy man.
The second one was a very large shard of metal which destroyed the tyre by making a hole which was almost 10mm long. I took the tyre off expecting carnage inside but the hole in the inner tube wasn't huge (less than 5mm slit), the mess wasn't all that much and it cleaned up with a bit of kitchen roll. I chucked the tyre then wiped the inner tube down, roughened it, patched it with a park patch and topped up the gunk to the correct weight (it'd lost 20g so about half the gunk I put in initially). The same tube has been going well since under a new tyre, which was a surprise as I hadn't expected it to be repairable with gunk in there.
Doesn't feel any different to ride at all. Remember I'm coming from using a touring tube of equal weight to this tube+slime setup.
Conclusion - gunk seems to work on small punctures as expected (though only one that I'm aware of so far) and the combination of light weight tube and gunk seems like it may well offer an advantage over a heavier touring tube of the same weight. Plus it's not difficult to clean up nor does it render a tube irreparable (the continental gunk I used at least, ymmv).
Still thinking I'll go tubeless once the options on the market are a bit more developed though. Think that's likely to be the best of all worlds if you can put up with the setup fiddles.
Having gone through the whole of last winter on GP4000SII and latex tubes without a puncture, the tyres cut up a month or so ago and I picked up a flat on the rear. As the tyre was a year old I thought that was reasonable and have put a new GP4000SII on the rear and a new latex tube. Having done some basic research on t'internet I've now put Bontrager sealant in as it apparently works better with latex tubes than with butyl.
I've run Supersonic innner tubes before with no sealant and found the latex tubes to attract fewer punctures, although I do have to keep pumping them up. Definitely a smoother ride with latex though, surprisingly so for such a small change. It will be interesting to see how our experience varies but based on performance over last winter it will be a while before there's anything to compare, fingers crossed.
I've now fitted the Marathon Plus 25c to my road bike and consigned the Tannus back to the garage. WOW. What a difference. Feel just as fast as the Durano Plus 23c (and on timed segments they are) but really surefooted.
The biggest difference over the Tannus and, to a much lesser extent, the Durano, is how they handle rougher ground. The tyres absord the shocks so much better. On Friday a cycled through Abigale (pun intended) in the dark so lots of broken twigs that would have given me broken spokes on Tannus and punctures on lightweight road tyres and the Marathons took them in their stride.
Even with the very tight tolerances of my b'Twin the Marathon's fit perfectly after a couple of minor adjustments to brakes and raceblades. Set the tyres at 100psi.
I have increasingly come to share this view through bitterly cold experience. I can't say that any of my many punctured Slime tubes show any evidence of being sealed anywhere else (i.e. no green spots where the current puncture isn't) so I'm now at the point of reverting to standard tubes (one can carry two standard tubes in the space it takes to store one Slime tube) and I'm just awaiting a new set of Marathon Plus 25c tyres, as I've discovered that my Durano Plus set is failing above the bead at the conjunction with the rim. Ho hum! Just have another four stones to lose on top of the three already lost and I'll be back where I was before becoming disabled eighteen years ago!
I've never been convinced by slime - I bought some of the pre-filled inner tubes, and they were utterly useless for the smallest of punctures. Just stick to cheap inner tubes, and patch them up when you get home.
Have bitten the bullet - under my conti gp4000sii tires now roll 50g conti supersonic tubes with 40g of conti revo sealant. Will report back next year or when i puncture, whichever is sooner!
Reminds me of Keith Bontrager's famous quote: "Strong, light, cheap. Pick any two."
Improved puncture resistance is going to have a detrimental effect on ride quality and rolling resistance. Unless you go tubeless it's a simple tradeoff.
Lightweight (~60g) and normal tubes like Conti Race 28s (~100g) are equally vulnerable to a sharp object and you won't notice the difference.
Have not tried slime inner tubes, but I'm now wondering whether a slime-filled tube could have saved me a roadside repair last week when a 3mm thorn caused a deflation in my Pro4 Endurance on the way to work. This road.cc review says they are 170g each.
Remember you can put slime into any tube, you don't have to use Slime's 170g prefilled tubes (which do appear very heavy). The conti28 tube "supersonic" is 50 grams and slime say you need 45 grams of their gunk for a road tyre, so this setup would be way lighter than Slime's own tube and slightly lighter than a 'regular' 100g inner tube.
Using a 50g tube filled with 45g of gunk in a Conti GP4000sII tire and it's still lighter than most tubeless tires on their own, plus they need gunk on top. I expect the tubeless setup to have lower rolling resistance as it's only one layer but it's significantly more work.
Having said that I've just been reading about the Schwalbe Pro One tubeless tyre which at 700x25 is 255g. That would seem to offer a significant weight saving as even with gunk and tubeless rim tape that's seriously light.
Depends on what sort of riding you do. If you are all on road then you don't need to protect (too much) against the loose stuff on towpaths. I'm currently using Durano Plus Etape with Slime tubes and I had the first puncture last week when I ran into a pothole filled with fallen leaves. The Slime tube split at a seam so that was that.
After the initial frustration you can change the tube in five minutes start to finish (I use a CO2 pump for speed). I was en route to work so had panniers and stuff on board.
I've even had punctures with Marathon Plus tyres with Slime tubes.
The third way is the "solid" Tannus tyre. I have a pair and I've done many miles on them but I find them around 10% slower than a pneumatic tyre and also find them to be pretty "dead" and unresponsive. The other issue with the Tannus is that they leave the spokes open to shock fractures at the hub (the spokes facture at the J presumably because the lack of air removes the pneumatic cushion) so you have to be really careful not to lose the spoke nipple in the rim because once a Tannus tyre is on you can't just pop it off and back on again.
I've not tried tubeless so cannot comment but for go anywhere, do anything cycling on a road bike the Durano Plus and slime combination is pretty hard to beat. I'm still trying to wear mine out!
Interesting, particularly the solid tyres! Luckily I'm all on road and purely leisure, plus I don't actually flat that much but then that could be because I've tended toward a thicker tube...
Tubeless
I like the idea but sounds like a PITA to put on and no weight benefit over a light tube, light tire and slime from what I can see?