Glentress | The Hub in the Forest | Tweed Valley

Stan's No Tubes - You Tube(less!) | Article : Jake Law

Stan's No Tubes - No Flats, No Fuss, No Weight....No Tubes!

It's a freezing December morning in Glentress Forest.
The trail is wet and muddy as I turn right into Pennel's Vennel, click down a few gears and launch straight into the little rock jumps, catching air on an exposed slab, my bike arcs gracefully, back wheel landing hard on the Red
Route's rocky ground...BANG!!! And my rear tyre goes immediately flat, victim to the dreaded snakebite.

Bugger!!

So begins a 40 minute farce, me desperately trying to remove my tyre and tube, covered in mud, fingers so cold I could scream in pain, breaking a tyre lever in the process, just to find that all I had as a spare tube was one with a Schreader valve, when my rim could only accept the narrower Presta type...and this only a mere half hour into the ride... a long push home...

Sound familiar?
Well, this was my last ride using conventional tubes in my tyres, and if
you've ever found yourself in a similar situation, then read on, my
hard riding amigo...

Enter Stan's No Tubes conversion kits - a system designed to convert your existing wheels and tyres to a tubeless system, making your old-fashioned tubes a thing of the past.

So what is it, and how does it work?
As the name implies, the system does away with your tubes, letting you inflate the dead space between your rim and tyre, and using a liquid latex sealant to instantly seal any holes that might be caused by thorns, nails,
drawing pins and even demented bike mechanics wielding Phillips screwdrivers
(ask us for a demonstration!!)

To make your rims airtight, the kit provides two plastic strips that cover your existing rim tape, and has Presta valves attached, which are used to inflate the space inside the tyre. (From the outside, the installed kit
looks exactly like a Presta tube...but, hey presto, there's no tube inside
the tyre!)

Fitting the kit is relatively easy, as long as you take care to ensure that
the latex sealant is covering the whole inside diameter of the tyre, sealing
up any pinholes you might have in your tyre.... or you can save yourself the
hassle, and get the guys at The Hub to convert your wheels to tubeless for a
mere £25 labour charge!

So what are the advantages of riding with Stan's No Tubes kits?
The most obvious advantage of doing away with a tube is that there is nothing to puncture, so you can ride over any thorns or other nasties with impunity.

It also allows you to run your tyres on very low pressures without having to worry about pinching the tube between the rim and the ground during an
impact (the dreaded 'snakebite' puncture mentioned earlier, impossible to fix using patches.)

Riding at lower pressures gives your tyres more contact area, resulting in
better grip - never a bad thing over those off-camber roots!
Having a tube inside a tyre also causes friction between the two as the
wheel spins, as the tube actually moves inside the tyre, resulting in a loss
of power...riding tubeless means a direct transmission of power from the
cassette to the wheel....yes, it's a microscopic amount, but every little
helps, right?
Lastly, riding with a tubeless system also makes the wheels much lighter,
especially on downhill bikes where the heavy duty tubes used can weigh as
much as motorbike tubes!
As this is rotating weight, lighter wheels will make the whole bike lighter,
much more so than those bling carbon handlebars you've been drooling over!

The kits cost between £35 to £45, depending on your rim width, and includes
everything you need, even enough latex sealant for refilling your tyres when
you change them as they wear out.
Ask the boys at the Hub for more info or to book a conversion at an extra
£25, or check out www.notubes.com for some amazing demonstration video
clips.

With us and our bikes slowly moving away from old-fashioned cable-operated
brakes, flimsy derailleurs and (hopefully!!) pink lycra, isn't it time we
ditch the old pneumatic tubes invented by some old geezer back in 1888??

''Tubes are extinct! Repent and convert, ye of little faith!'' - Jake the Mech, 2007 AD