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TECH NEWS
2021 Tubolito X-Tubo City-Tour inner tube - 4.jpegTubolito unveils ‘unpuncturable’ inner tube with one year warranty against flats
Tubolito has released a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) inner tube called the X_Tubo City/Tour that comes with a one year warranty against flats. If it punctures within that period you get a free replacement.
“The X-Tubo is… designed to withstand everything the city and touring rider can throw at it,” says Tubolito.
“The new, even more resistant material makes punctures impossible during normal use.
“X-Tubo City/Tour is the toughest tube worldwide. It was developed to make punctures a thing of the past and to guarantee worry-free rides in your daily life.”
7 of the best inner tubes — find out how to save weight, ride faster and prevent flats
The X-Tubo City/Tour is said to resist nails, broken glass and thorns, and Tubolito has produced a video to support its claims, and it certainly looks impressive.
You just need to register the product within a month of purchase to get a year’s warranty against all flats.
Review: Tubolito Tubo Road 700C inner tubes
The Tubolito X-Tubo City/Tour is designed for 700C wheels, comes in Presta (130g) and Schrader (139g) versions, and is suitable for tyres from 30mm to 50mm wide – meaning that you could even use it on a lot of road bikes. Each is priced at £22.99. That's considerably more than a standard butyl inner tube, of course, but if it stops you fixing a flat by the side of the road on a wet November evening...
Get more info at www.tubolito.com. Tubolito’s UK distributor is Extra.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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31 comments
That tube is almost as much money as what I spend for a tire!
And why only guarantee the tube for a year against flats? does the tube over time degrade allowing for flats? Or are they simply working the odds angle?
I have never heard back from Tubolito if their patch kit will permanently attach to the tube for 10 years or more or is it simply a patch to get you home where you have to toss the tube and buy another?
It looks too good to be true. I'd test them with Conti 5000GP which look like a swiss cheese after 1500k. Got four punctures on a 100km ride.. gosh.
Before each ride (or once a week) turn your bike upside down and check for bits of glass / thorns in your tyres by slowly turning them and shining a torch in them (phone torch works fine) I find best to do when tyres are pumped up, if you find a bit of glass yuu is kind of flick it by rubbing your finger nail over it to pop it out of the tyre.
most punctures are caused by glass slowly working its way through the tread over a fe rides then eventually getting to the tube and popping it, or that's how I'm finding my riding conditions.
Better be quick as I read it is only acceptable for the bike to be upside down mid crash
I check tyres after each and every ride, jokes aside. They held up first 1000km and then - bam-bam-bam. Four punctures in one ride, then 3 more in 3 rides. I checked them and they literally looked like I'm a gravel cyclist, not a roadie.
most punctures are caused by glass slowly working its way through the tread over a few rides then eventually getting to the tube and popping it
This does indeed occur in some urban areas. Out here in North Lancashire it's always thorns, sometimes working through slowly.
Four punctures in one ride, then 3 more in 3 rides. I checked them and they literally looked like I'm a gravel cyclist, not a roadie
Gravel and rough roads, with or without a trailer = hardly any punctures because there's no glass and nobody is paid to cut hawthorns and spread the cuttings across the road. I don't think these tubes are going to work- I admit that the nail would be impressive if it was genuine- that nail would stay in the tyre in real life. Round and round with the nail pressing on the tube pushed onto the point by the spoke bed? Not believable.
> Gravel and rough roads, with or without a trailer
that's why I'm back to Conti 4-season. Slower, but I didn't have a single puncture in three years. I seriously abused them and after more then 10000km they looked.. well.. used.. but they still were unbroken.
It's interesting that Tubolito is using Schwalbe tyres for the test, being Schwalbe one of the few contender on the TPU "unpuncturable" tubes (the Aerothan line) market.
Why dont they stick a rubber tread to the outside and make a puncture proof tubular
Watch the video at around 1:22. The tube only has to be tough enough that the nail can push it away from the tread without puncturing it. If you glued the tread to it, it would have to take the whole force.
You could glue it only along the edge of the tread, rather than the whole surface, which would still allow it to move away from the tread, albeit the play would reduce the nearer your puncture site got to the rim.
I'd like to know where they tested them.....it seems far too good to be true. However, I may be tempted to buy a pair later in the year.
If they'd do a 28mm version I'd buy them today!!
That's assuming they work of course...
Ditto (for 25mm) - any particular reason why they don't think their narrow tubes are as puncture resistant?
It´s probably meant for commuting. 130g thick tube is not the best for rolling resistance so it is not meant for performance oriented road tyre.
My guess would be that thinner tyres often have higher pressures and that would mean more force pushing the inner tube against the puncturing thorn/nail and thus less puncture resistance.
It is axiomatic that nothing resists hawthorns! Therefore, this is an ideal candidate for a road.cc test. It should be carried out along a canal towpath when a hawthorn hedge has just been cut, but without cheating by using Marathon Plus tyres- these do mostly work, but are pretty heavy. Even I would consider these if they actually worked, but I don't believe it yet- you can easily get a 5 mm thorn through the tyre and it just stays there, sometimes plugging its own hole through the ordinary tube for a while.
Your right nothing resists hawthorns
I've had Marathon Plus on my commuter for years and hawthorns just seem to cut through like the tyres are made of butter. I was reading the article thinking I might get a set of these tubes and go back to a set of tyres that don't weigh a ton and I can actually feel the road but you brought me back down to earth. Thanks, I think 
Admittedly, I have low pressure 3 inch Maxxis Chronicles, but they are like thorn magnets, but luckily I decided to set them up tubeless, lbs put Orange Enduance Seal in them, which I have continued to use, of the very many thorns I have pulled out all have sealed quickly. This of course may not work with higher pressure narrower tyres, or them demon foreign thorns.
All of them would have been ride ruiners with my latex tubed 2 inch knobblies.
The smug satisfaction of pulling out and inch of more worth of thorn, even with stick attached, watching it seal and continueing the ride...
I think that I'll self-insure on this one....
Yet again, not a new idea, polyurethane innertubes were 'the big thing' a number of years ago I seem to remember.
They did not catch on then either for a number of practical and excessive cost reasons.
Seems like they just rolled the puncture insurance premium into the price of the tube. More financial engineering than product engineering.
If a standard inner tube costs £3 then this is roughly 8 tubes. In my normal years of riding 4,000 - 5,000km I don't puncture 8 times so it would perhaps seem to be overpriced until you take into account the hassle of changing a tube, especially if most of your distance is commuting when you need to be somewhere at a certain time. If you get 3 punctures every 5,000km then you're essentially paying a £14 premium to not puncture for the year which seems pretty reasonable to me (assuming that the tube does as it's supposed to and not puncture).
If it works as intended - and that's a big if - I'd certainly take that £14 a year. Having to replace a tube in the pissing rain, in the middle of winter, worrying about picking up the wee one in time was no fun.
I'm intrigued. What's the chance of a Road.cc test of these?
Given I'm Mr Puncture I'll happily test them. Lob a few over and they'll get a proper testing.
It'll definitely happen if they will send us some, already requested!
If you really want to put the cat amongst the pigeons, you could have a puncture-off with one rider on tubeless and one rider on these.
Spend ten minutes cycling on roads in the West Midlands...See how long they last on these pot-holed hellscape roads.
You'd never be able to get exactly the same conditions for both sets of tyres though, so you could never have a 'real world' test comparing the two. A lab test would be the only way to do it.
I'd imagine that the big price to pay, other than the £ cost, would be rolling resistance. They'd probably give your tyres the feel of tractor tyres. A rolling resistance test would be an essential part of any test RoadCC undertook.
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