Opinion: A Cry for Help
Aaron Gwin credits his Flat Tire Defender inserts for carrying speed through the roughest sections of race courses, but it couldn't prevent the slashed tire that cost him the Lenzerheide World Cup victory.
Recently, a number of innovative souls entered the mountain bike market with tire inserts—Huck Norris, Cush Core, and Flat Tire Defender are the most notable entries of what appears to be a rising tide of foam rubber tire and rim savers. Laughter was the initial response, but the room quieted down after we learned who had been winning races using inserts. Aaron Gwin was one of them. He had been on the ground floor developing the Flat Tire Defender and was so impressed that he insisted on a one-year, exclusive-use clause in his contract. Gwin won the World Cup DH series that season.
Bolstered by favorable results in competition and equally glowing reviews in the media, I have no doubt that large bike brands with comprehensive component ranges will join the party, touting their own “better than X” wheel-saving inserts. And, it won’t stop there. If inserts can save downhill or enduro wheels and tires from destruction, predictably, smaller and lighter-weight versions will be produced to share the love with cross-country riders.
At 84 grams, the Huck Norris insert is presently the lightest alternative. The simple, full-width design wards off pinch flats.
The Flat Tire Defender insert's oval shape helps secure the beads and functions as the tire's bottom-out cushion.
Inserts could not have come at a better time. Mountain bikes and rider skills have jumped to new levels, while tire and rim technology has stagnated. Armed with some form of insert, future mountain bike riders may not have to suffer the disparaging sidewall slashes, pinch-punctures and damaged rims that many of today’s riders take for granted. Once again, grassroots inventors have stepped in to solve a persistent problem for their fellow mountain bikers and in doing so, also created an additional revenue stream for sagging retailers and bike brands searching for the new it. Everyone wins.
So, what’s wrong with this picture?
The elephant in this room is that tire and rim makers could have addressed those issues long ago, but they didn’t. Without any recourse, their customers were left to figure out a solution. Tire and wheel manufacturers must have been aware of those deficiencies soon after the first wire-beaded pneumatic tires were mated with Thomas B. Jeffery’s clincher rim—which means they have had over a hundred years to figure it out. A century of gradual improvement that resulted in some darn good products, but failed to produce a spark bright enough to illuminate the insufficiencies of the existing system or ignite a fire underneath manufacturers that was hot enough to inspire action. Brush aside the silly science, peer behind the marketing terminology, and it becomes apparent that the only real innovations that cycling’s rim and tire makers have given us in that century have been the folding bead, and the tubular cross-section rim profile. (For the record, UST was a fail.)
If any of you are tearing up over this abuse, grab a hanky and let me explain how the process actually works. There’s the design phase and then there’s the manufacturing phase, and it all boils down to this:
The elephant in this room is that tire and rim makers could have addressed those issues long ago, but they didn’t. Without any recourse, their customers were left to figure out a solution. Tire and wheel manufacturers must have been aware of those deficiencies soon after the first wire-beaded pneumatic tires were mated with Thomas B. Jeffery’s clincher rim—which means they have had over a hundred years to figure it out. A century of gradual improvement that resulted in some darn good products, but failed to produce a spark bright enough to illuminate the insufficiencies of the existing system or ignite a fire underneath manufacturers that was hot enough to inspire action. Brush aside the silly science, peer behind the marketing terminology, and it becomes apparent that the only real innovations that cycling’s rim and tire makers have given us in that century have been the folding bead, and the tubular cross-section rim profile. (For the record, UST was a fail.)
If any of you are tearing up over this abuse, grab a hanky and let me explain how the process actually works. There’s the design phase and then there’s the manufacturing phase, and it all boils down to this:
Thomas Jeffery patented the clincher rim in 1882, five years before John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire.
Rim designers fuss about tenths of a millimeter here and there. They play video games with powerful Finite Element Analysis software to optimize materials and experiment with shapes to counter stress, both real and imagined. But, when the meetings are over and the profiles are finalized, the people with clean fingernails hand their files to the folks with dirty fingernails and the woman in charge of manufacturing, wearing blue overalls and black-rimmed magnifiers yells: “Listen up! It appears that (your name here’s) new lightweight, fragile rim design is thinner and their cutting-edge heavyweight, strong design is thicker! Imagine that?”
Stan's Arch rims exemplify the modern tubular cross-section clincher design.
Continental's graphic depicts the strategies used to bolster conventional tires.
Tire makers would love you to believe that they allocate twenty engineers and spend a gazillion dollars on rubber compounding for each and every bike brand who walks in with a tread design in hand, and even if that were true, after the manufacturer’s designers are done designing. After the know-it-alls at Big Bike Brand USA, or TrailBreaker International walk out of their secret meetings, the large, bearded man with black shoes and a sweaty brow who runs the production line yells; “TrailBreaker International Enduro Tire—more rubber and extra fabric!” And; “You guys, over there—Big Bike Brand XC Trail Tire—less rubber and less fabric!”
Yes, I have toured wheel factories. Yes, I have toured tire-manufacturing facilities. Yes, I have participated in those design processes and, yes, I understand that most of those people are very passionate about their crafts. Excuse me for oversimplifying it, but the end result is the same: another clincher tire is born to pinch flat, suffer sidewall punctures and probably fall off the rim shortly after—and another clincher rim will be born to assist in that process. Embarrassing? You bet. Pathetic? Wait for it.
“Pathetic” is that mountain bikers—paying customers—put up with that cycle of inertia for over 30 years and bought those products with hardly a whimper. “Pathetic,“ is when we finally wake up and realize that wheel and tire makers are never going to get off their asses, we buy eighty-dollar rubber snakes to stuff into thousand-gram tires, mount them to DH-weight wheels and then high-five each other for this cutting-edge solution. “Pathetic” is how many who read this will adamantly defend the status quo.
Cush Core's graphic echoes performance claims made by most insert makers. One Cush Core weighs about 250 grams.
Jared Graves flatted, but finished the stage using a Cush Core insert (laying on the ground) at the Madera EWS.
Follow the same path and you will always arrive at the same destination. The law of diminishing returns suggests that, regardless of the magnitude of their investments, tire and rim makers will fail to achieve any significant improvement in performance or durability by employing their present construction and fundamental design methods. You don’t have to search far to find proof.
The best pioneer mountain bikes, with their rigid frames and forks, weighed 30 pounds. Today, a top 150-millimeter-travel dual-suspension trail bike weighs the same, and it is a magnitude more durable and reliable. We got there by exploring different paths—by abandoning construction methods and design standards that were weak and then adopting new ones that were lighter, stronger and more efficient. Imagine how pendulously heavy a mountain bike would be today if we simply added extra layers to every component that lacked sufficient strength or durability?
To their credit, Mavic co-developed the UST system, which introduced the tubeless concept, and a modest locking bead interface. Tire and rim makers, however, largely rejected the open-source system.
I don’t think it’s my place to tell all of you rim and tire makers how to run your businesses, but as part of your food chain, I think it’s fair to offer up some suggestions. So, while you are discussing your next products, please consider these starting points:
Casings that can’t be torn: Hate to break it to you, but rubber is not armor. Same goes for polyester and nylon. There are a number of fabrics available off the shelf that don’t abrade, and that can stop shattered glass, sharp knives, micro-meteorites, and bullets. Rubber is the heaviest component of a wheel. The only place it should be used is for the tread and to seal the tire. A tubeless tire should never suffer a sidewall tear.
Locking beads: A tire should never come unseated from the rim after a puncture, and a tubeless tire should never burp air. Give us a rim and bead interface that locks in place.
Design a cushion: Dump the sealing tape and give us an engineered plastic liner that has an O-ring for the valve stem, seals the rim, and incorporates some sort of cushion between the rim flanges and the tire. Bottoming the tire casing onto the rim is a fact of life. Design for it.
Safe failure mode: Optimize lower tire profiles for wide rims and then mold them so if a tire goes flat, the tread mushrooms over the rim to protect it, and also to maintain a degree of control. (A feature that could also prevent a lot of road riders from becoming human hamburger.) It would be great to roll out from a flat without inflicting fatal damage to the rims.
If any or all of those tips prove helpful, don’t thank me. Thank the folks who designed those tire inserts I mentioned earlier. They risked their own money to solve your problems and, to a large degree, they managed to address every item on that list. So, rather than steal their work by developing your own inserts, why don’t you folks invent a new tubeless tire and rim system that offers us a permanent solution. No need to rush. We’ve waited 30 years.
In the meantime, I wholeheartedly recommend inserts for aggressive riders who suffer punctures and damage caused by the inadequacies of existing clincher rims and tires. Shelling out over 80 dollars for inserts and adding 200 grams or more to your wheels is a smart investment when you consider how miniscule the performance returns would be if you gave your 80 dollars and 200 grams to the tire and wheel guys to do the same job. In the end, however, inserts are not a real solution, they are a cry for help.
MENTIONS: @RichardCunningham
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Are they related to front derailleurs?
42 psi? Might as well have wood for tires.
#Iridesnowshoe.
Couple that with the amount of rain the place see's and you're talking significant amounts of mud that get's dragged over those roots and rocks.
So since nobody is adjusting their pressures between runs for different lines or trails, you find what you can deal with and ride the day out like that.
Might give Maxxis another try when their folding DH casings are available in Europe.
Because of that I run 2.5 DHF in DH casing with a cushcore and stans race sealent front and back. It's heavy, but it's not going to puncture easily.
Only issue is I don't carry a spare tube now, as Cushcore is such a pain to install it's going to be impossible to fix an issue on the trail...
#facepalm!!!!!!
The industry is pushing band-aid solutions. We need a proper tubeless setup, not some gunky fluid that hardens up in a few months and barely works to begin with. Now we are stuffing pool noodles in our tires as a solution.....
This is why inserts are better
Most Pro DH guys don't even run pressures above 30psi nowadays. Adam Brayton runs under 20psi on his DH bike, and I'd bet he's quicker and riding rougher stuff than either of us mortals.
What would be awesome? If someone tested various wheels (with different cross sections of course) and tested under controlled conditions to verify what you are intimating.
I got a puncture in a qualifying heat for the mega last year on my Nomad,so soon as I got home, 2ply downhill casing Minion DHFs and freeride Maxxis tubes with sealant (yes sealant!) was fitted to my bike and I've not had a puncture since! Yeah rolling weight is high but I won't be stopping to fix a puncture which can cost you in race/qualifies.
As I know!!!
No punctures equals more riding time!.... Win.
Ps my hardtail is set up tubeless though. Pigeons amongst the cats
I had a doublewide rear back in the day. Kawi green!
And why should I continue to give my money to these dudes if they can't be bothered enough to test the propensity of a design to pinch flatting. Of course I'm phucked because I want to ride so I have to cough up some money. LOL
I got a track pump with a gauge and found I'd been thinking 20psi was good to ride around town on 26x2.1 with tubes. Increased pressure to something over 35 and suddenly all problems went away and tyre casings stopped falling apart too!
When you get right down to it, there is so much variance in equipment and riding styles that it's nearly impossible to predict how everything will work together without empirical data. AKA just riding your bike!
But it seems like the 'bro' thing to do is to try and mess with tire pressures in the teens and then bitch about slamming their tires with their rims, resulting in flats and ruined tires. Put your pressures up, and your risk of flats significantly decreases, right?
You gotta look past your personal setup and think that there are people other than you, riding in other places, who are suffering flat tire related issues.
I see your argument ALL the time online, and its not cutting it anymore.
Insert any of the following for the same argument:
- 26" wheels work fine
- Who needs 1x when front deraileurs exist?
- 50T rear cogs are useless I get by fine with 1x10
Enough is enough.
At 30psi my rear end felt really chattery and didn't want to track the ground due to the tire acting kind of like a spring. After a bit of experimenting I found that right at 26psi my tire acted sooo much better. Instead of it wanting to bounce away from any impact (rocks, roots), it more absorbed them and gripped much harder.
You don't have to start off at a low psi, just start at your regular psi and ride the same trails you normally do. Then the next couple times you go riding start with 1 or 2psi lower than usual. Large volume tires will be more sensitive to psi change than a lower volume tire. You can get better grip and have sidewall support+flat protection, you just have to play around with it for a while.
Personally, I actually do hate that squirmy feel, our local trails are super rocky and sharp, and at 200 lb I usually run about 30 PSI, or drop a bit of air before descents. The only issues I have had are sidewall cuts on maxxis and schwalbe. Specialized Butchers with grid casing has been puncture free for about 2 years.
The riders are starting to exceed the capabilities of the hardware in the wheel department. I run moto tires tubliss with 3-6 psi on the rear and if it goes flat I can ride back because the inner core keeps the bead on the rim. We're not sending someone to the moon, just need a mtb tire that doesn't fail under any number of normal riding conditions.
I also think some riders just plough stuff that is asking for trouble and then wonder why they end up shredding a tyre or puncturing....I've seen exactly the same road riding in the past...with little dudes getting punctures when I never did.
I do think the tyre/wheel systems could be a lot better though....I don't fund maxxis beads big enough to really snap in tight yet I like the tyres performance
IMO the issue with a standard tubeless set up is the tyre and rim can come in contact. I think with a split tube setup the small section of tube between the trye and rim does help to prevent pinch flats. My old rear wheel has 5-6 large dents and I never pinched the tyre.
For more rocky trails I would either try a double split tube (to provide more rubber between the rim and tyre) or thicker split tube before going to a heavier tyre. This also keeps the mass as close to the centre as possible which is not the case with an insert. Plus the split tubes don't soak up sealant.
Sidewall cuts are another matter.
I really don't get the torn sidewall issue. I've been riding for over 20 years and have never ripped the side out of a tire. Pinch flats, slices in tubes, thorn flats, sure, but not like what is being described here.
I'm 185, run around 30psi (enough to get the carcass to flex when I put weight on it). front and rear and rarely get flats.
As for asking for tires that don't come off the rim in a flat... They can't make car rim/tires that do this either. The only exception is bead lockers on off road rigs. That is the only solution so far. So yeah, bike tire manufacturers could to it, but everyone would complain about the weight.
BTW that's the only puncture I've ever had on E13 tyres and I was probably just unlucky that it was on the back of a side knob that I'm guessing moved around and made the hole bigger.
I have never gone through a sidewall of a decent tyre either although there's some pretty big marks from some rocks.
@fartymarty: et al
You maybe able to burp at stoopid low pressures but your tyre would be horrible and rolly anyway. I usually run mine at 23f / 26r with no issues.
1 and 3 are actually very, very true, sorry.
One thing is the 1% downhill-enduro racer demands, which I can understand.
One other is the industry keeping on pushing new useless things to let the remaining 99% spend their money.
I'm 180 lbs and haven't changed tires in 1 whole year
Front: DHF EXO 3C 2.5" at 20 PSI
Rear: DHF EXO 3C 2.3" at 25 PSI
Wheels: Hope Pro 4 laced to Stan's Flow MKIII using Stan's race sealant
I'm about 75 kg with gear, and I have to run heavy enduro casings or full on DH casings if I want more than a few rides on a set of tires.
MTB Industry : Here's our newest thing... Plus sized tires!!! Thinner walls, less air used and the sidewalls protrude moar!!!
And the niche-hunters/first adopters eat that shit up.
Good job guys.
That's why everyone riding in EWS and DH are running plus sized tires.
Please put down the plus sized koolaid.
The only flat I have gotten in those two years is on a Schwalbe Rocket Ron that I tried out which lasted about 2 weeks. I suggest you actually go ride one before you write them all off based on one review from two years ago.
Multiple flats on plus sized tires and not 2 years ago.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=82jOVRQoQJs&t=5m13s
Are you seriously telling me that plus sized tires are just as durable as tires with DH/"enduro" casings?
/sarcasm just in case.
We run reinforced sidewall fronts (Maxxis EXO or Vittoria TNT) on the front and full-on double casing tires in the rear (WTB Enduro casing or Maxxis DoubleDown) and have had zero failures, even thrashing the tires in the Rockies and Southwest.
Modern car tires are just about flat proof, but take a car tire on a flinty or granite stewn gravel road and see what happens-it ain't pretty. The truck tires built to withstand that kind of abuse have 12 plies and are really, really expensive ($200-300 each).
If the auto industry (with waaaaaay more money and resources) can't do better than adding plies and rubber (Conti, Michelin and other tire brands that do car and bike tires put the smart folks in the motorized division-we get leftovers) I doubt that there's a good process for using aramid or other strong fibers to make a more bombproof tire casing that rolls well.
A tire using these kinds of materials would also likely be really, really expensive ($200-300 each). On a consumable item (the rubber of the tread would likely have to be the same, and isn't all that durable, especially on surfaces like shale, granite and slickrock) that strikes me as not worth the expense.
I think is not and easy task to make a wheel bombproof,but new tire/rim combos works really well. I never puncture a Maxxis tubeless tire but other tires are smoking paper. I manage to dent the rim an then taking a flat but the tire always is OK. At 63 kg in dirty rocky terrain I destroyed 1 rear wheel per year in the last 5 years.
RC mentions that nobody would want to ride stuff that won't break and I think that's what it comes down to. ALL brands of bike, tire, rim etc. fail from hard use (not abuse). I'll take pushing a 28-30 pound bike around to get 140-160mm of travel, hydro brakes, a dropper and wheels that don't grenade anytime they're pushed through a rock garden at speed. I wouldn't want a DH weight bike for everyday riding, even if the fail rate was zero.
I agree with the points in the article though. It seems mental to me to spend loads of money on rims, tyres and then have to spend more on these kind of inserts to make the very expensive wheel and tyre combo you've just bought work reliably. Bizarre.
If you have been using some cheap copys, they might suck the sealant like sponges and don't even save your rims or tires because the material does not absorb any forces.
It works perfectly, mostly if the Camembert is an original one, exclusively made in Normandie with raw milk.
(I tell you: it doesn't work with pale asian copies, believe me)
Many advantages:
1 - Punctures get deliciously smelly.
2 - Considering the smell, you can easily recognize your bike when one is lost among hundreds in bike parks.
3 - In case of bad crash alone in a lost mountain (it happened to me 2 weeks ago in Spain, where I broke my hand btw), you can easily survive until the rescue comes, as long as you've brought a french baguette of bread and a liter of (good) wine, of course.
4 - Camembert tastes much better than any rubber sealant, even if you don't particularly like Camembert.
PS: in Quebec they inject some Poutine cheese instead of Camembert, because the french Canadians are a bit touchy you know. But we're living in a free world, aren't we?
With current technology though, we should be able to have something as tough yet much lighter.
If I hadn't changed wheel sizes a couple weeks ago, I'd try drilling my rims for a 2nd valve stem and run a normal tube in the Procore.
Originally had it on a 26" aluminum wheeled (Loaded AMX) freeride bike (G-Spot), which I rode the crap out of, no flats after installing the Procore, no clogged or bent stems.
Now I also have it on a 27.5" carbon wheeled (Nobl) Santa Cruz Nomad (2016), which I am also riding the crap out of. So far no flats & no clogged or bent stems.
Again, very happy with the Procore system.
Also, you can often see the difference in grip between my tires & my riding buddies (who don't have Procore). They will generally skid down rock slabs in Squamish with the back tire locked... While the lower tire pressures I can run allows my bike to grip without skidding on the same rock slabs.
We all agree, force is bigger if surface is bigger for same pressure.
But putting a 1" or 3" tire on a rim doesn't change how many Square inches of the rim take the pressure : it's still the inside of walls and the surface where you put the tape (sorry, bad words).
This is also why the max authorized pressure for a rim isn't indicated for a given tire size.
@buster-and-bailey :
You're talking about the interface with the ground with your example. Waki talks of pressure on the rim.
For example:
www.eastoncycling.com/media/Easton%20Rim%20pressure.pdf
Gauge pressure is absolutely different from force on the tire -- the whole tire, not just at the interface to the rim. Again, if you don't believe me (or physics), put 40 psi in your 2.4" MTB and then 40 psi in your 1" road tire, and after you go ride then tell me which one is 'firmer'.
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen charts like that before.
Again, the MTB tire with 40psi will feel different because it has a bigger surface touching the ground etc.
Still not related to pressure that the rim takes, the comparison with the feeling of a 1" 40psi tire is irrelevant.
One question : so you're saying surface area of the rim changes with a different tire? Since you said "force on the rim is proportional to pressure AND surface area" (and I agree with that)
www.velonews.com/2017/03/bikes-and-tech/technical-faq-science-tire-pressure-rim-width-heat-buildup_433214
Geez, lots of downvotes for some basic physics.
Edit: Enjoyed the article by Zinn
It's the one thing on a bike that must to be replaced once, twice, even thrice a season for some riders. Where's the incentive for tire makers to kill that Golden Goose?
Cynical? Yes, but most likely the actual culprit here.
But now? Nope.
I bought into the UST system after trying the early tubeless conversion systems (which were a real hit/miss affair) and it was brilliant. Never had a problem running low pressures, rims were seemingly indestructible and the tyres stood up to a load of abuse. Admittedly I did use sealant but then everyone else who I knew with UST did too.
Currently running two bikes with Tubeless Ready wheels and tyres and they're great too. One has the Trek plastic rim strip system which is simple genius, a UST fixing but in a convertible form. No problems on that whatsoever, even with XC tyres on rocky terrain. The other is a taped version with EXO tyres and that withstands everything from rock-strewn trail centres to full-on uplift days without any issues.
So over the last 10 years I have had 0 tyres deflate mid-ride. No pinch flats, not tears or slashes to the sidewalls. I've had one rim dented after casing on a square-edged rock landing a drop at speed at Antur Stiniog but I didn't have to worry about it until I got home, even then it straightened out in 2 minutes. The only riders I know who do have tyre issues either ride heavily or make inappropriate tyre selections. Yes a super tyre made out of carbon-kevlar that weighs 500g and is indestructible would be great for some people but it would cost a fortune and that would mean it would be a commercial flop like UST. Just read the comments on here baulking at the price of the latest tyres that cost over £60/$80-90 and you'll see that the market for super-pricy tyres is low.
It all comes down to the tyre being the component that has to deal with being smashed over and into the terrain with nothing to save it, When you realise that it is being punished a whole lot more, even by the average rider, than it was 5 or 6 years ago it's frankly amazing it survives at all. IT can be made better but it's the best we've ever had, by a long way.
To say that fabrics are available that don't abrade is incorrect. All high-performance fabrics will be susceptible to abrasion to a greater or lesser extent which is where the rubber coating comes in on the outside. These high-performance fabrics (Vectran, Aramids, Dyneema etc) are also so expensive that we'd be looking at tyres being significantly more expensive than they already are. This might be fine for racing but for me I don't want to spend £100 per disposable tyre to mitigate against the risk of a side wall slash which happens rarely to me (following a phase experimenting with too-light tyres). In the case of a side wall slash nowadays I'm prepared to fit a tube and sidewall sleeve (toothpaste tube & duct tape) and enter limp-home mode. Also, in terms of density rubber is barely any heavier than any of these high-performance fabrics although they obviously use more rubber.
Dumping a bunch of goo into a tire has to be one of the biggest hacks ever. Once I can't find UST tires, I'm going back to tubes.
My deemax with maxxis UST was the best setup I have ever run. Even if you did cut the tire with a rock and get a flat the tire would stay seated onto the rim and you could finish off the trail without damage to the rim.
Also would set up with a floor pump every time no problem at all.
Retailers and OEM bike makers balked at UST because it soon became clear that liquid sealant was the key to tubeless success. Back yard inventor Stan Kositack's Notubes tubeless system proved otherwise - that almost any tire could be adapted to tubeless and seated on an ordinary rim, It was the turning point for tubeless that ultimately debunked the delamination story and produced a lighter weight, self-sealing system that retained air longer than tube type tires. We call it "tubeless ready" now.
UST's lasting contribution is the rectangular bead seal and the insistence that UST rims conform to the UST bead profile and seat diameter - a superior system that WTB has adopted across its tubeless ready range.
That's the long version.
The Notubes design allowed lots of other wheel maker to produce tubeless rims : Spank, WTB.... But this system requires fussing with tapes. And since tolerances are not as strict as UST, you have some tire-rim combo that are really tight and some that are really loose.
Disagree, that goo has saved my ass many times. From fixing small punctures in the road instantly to sealing up a large gash in the tire enough for me to continue riding all day. Orange seal I love u
I simply cannot justify the weight and cost of the cushcores, even the Hucks seem expensive for what is basically a styrofoam liner. I get that its "engineered" closed cell material blah blah, but come on.
I'm delighted to be running a Pinion gearbox. It's a thing of dreams. Yeah it's a tad heavier (yet actually a benefit in some ways) and the resistance disappears altogether after a few hundred miles once it beds in.
Imagine if the Pinion gearbox had been in development for as long as, and had the same investment as, the rear mech... just imagine.
But on the complete bike there are some little things that would make life easier and lenghten the lifetime of components like RockShox's sag meter or Fox putting teflon washers on mounts for rear shox to prevent them from being destroyed by a frame that isn't precisly straight (wich happens and i have had a destroyed shock for that reason and also know a few others with same issues).
Die cut one end of your foam, wrap your rim, mark the overlap, die cut the other end. Link the ends. Ride your bike.
I'll collect my royalty on a biannual basis.
...Oh wait, we have solutions: gearboxes and tyre inserts! Let's wake up and invest in the right equipment and not keep throwing our hard-earned cash at the currently popular (pathetic) drivetrain and tyre manufacturers.
Some dude in a shed may have already come up with a trigger. I think I saw some for an Effigear somewhere.
Tire treads also wear out, in case anyone forgot while busy worrying about their sidewalls. Will a new "system" insert stop the $80 tire from hitting the bin with useless thrashed knobs any quicker?
Live on 26ers
Rim design, tire bead design and pressure dictate the strength of the seal. You can get away with riding on a poor
tire/rim matchup by running higher pressure, but when you want to run lower pressures the rim design you run
will dictate what tires you should buy IF you want a better bead seal.
i learned that the loss of tire pressure from burps, was due to wrong tire/rim matching, (poor bead sealing).
simple truth is you cant just go out and buy any tire and expect it too seal up with your rims, whether
you run ust, ghetto, or whatever.
Don't get fooled (too much) by marketing bla bla....
I'll pass on that.
So why does it work for cars and motorcycles? Weight and energy. They weigh a lot more, go a lot faster (a lot more energy), and need to deform less.
DH and Enduro bikes are a lot lighter and go a lot slower so technology has some work to do to figure out how to maintain bead while running the lower pressures we need for deformation and compliance.
Come on, people are being nazis with standarts, technologies, carbon fiber, electronic this, electronic that, dish plate cogs here, e-bike koms there..... and a lot of other crap, then, they forget to ride. Or better, to enjoy the ride.
Richard, my personal advice for you. Remember the old times, when you were not an industry c*nt and just rode your bike because you loved it. That old times when you were a kid, left home with a 20inch wheel bike, not tubes, no spares, no bullshit. You rode for hours, got a puncture far away, had to walk home, but still had a blast.
Come on, stop being a dick.
Cheers
They released a rim that had a raised center section, that was meant to help stop pinch flats.
Everyone complained it was too heavy I think. But I can't remember what they were called or find any pictures of them.
The mighty engineers can go about chasing tire solutions while the rest of us are out riding.
"A Cry for Help"- spare us the ridiculous dramatics. Perhaps if Gwin had ridden a little lighter through the section he flatted in Lenz, he'd be a better racer, and won.
www.pinkbike.com/news/Tech-Tuesday--Wider-Rims-Are-Better-and-Why-Tubeless-Tires-Burp-.html
Lets keep calling for these changes, maybe years from now, the industry will get it: forums.mtbr.com/downhill-freeride/rims-downhill-wider-better-tubeless-wth-superglue-690136.html
It looks like it's only available in 26" or 29r sizes. It's priced like a nice set of Enve carbon rims.
As probably any design engineer will tell you, refining the design of anything using FEA is far from playing video games. A single FEA simulation can take hours or days to perform depending on the mesh size and each time you tinker with the shape or dimensions, you have to re-mesh and re-run the simulation and do this for each load scenario/test case. Perhaps designing the wheels using CAD tools is more likened to playing video games, but I assure you, FEA is far from it.
Besides using lower pressures (50 to 60% less) increasing traction and feeling, reduced to zero: flats, burps and all the problems. And it is so fun running 13psi (front) in the wet (used to run 35psi)
After a year in use ditched tubes and still without problems (let's see for the following years).
Post 17
forums.mtbr.com/wheels-tires/anyone-tried-schwalbes-new-addix-compound-1045441.html
My Mary DH after three days at my local DH.
Schwab did replace it though, just showed up today.
@MikerJ - I wanted to give them some rests of slack since I have never heard of any issues with Schwalbe DH casings, other than they wear out super fast. But well, according to your post it seems that there is no hope.
The only thing I can give to Schwalbe is that their XC tyres have amazing grip to rolling resistance ratio. It is quite impressive how much climbing and cornering grip you can squeeze out from Rocket Ron or Rapid Rob. Maxxis XC tyres suck ass in grip dept
On second thought you might just want to patent it before you post it on the web.
Hopefully some rim / tire manufacturers join forces and create an actual solution soon instead of this overpriced foam-and-goop nonsense.
I must say though, for trail/AM/Enduro If you ride fast in real mountains, with lots of chunk lying around, dress up to the occasion and use fkng DH tyres... it does not take that much more energy to pedal them up to the top.
Yup!
"Tubeless ready" is a cop out. As is "sealing rim tape".
Why didn't UST stick? It works!
Attention rim & tire makers: please bring us system rims, tires and inserts that cost as much or more than current components. Also make them incompatible with current tires and rims, and 50-200% more expensive-- all so I never ever have to spend time fixing a flat or walking out. It will be worth any price.