AJA 23: Tubeless Sealant Deep-Dive
Silca has a new tubeless tire sealant out, and Hottie and Fatty have some questions about it. A whole hour's-worth of questions, in fact. From the recycling aspect of it to setup strategies to keeping carbon fiber from clogging your valve stem, this is the episode that shows what happens when Josh starts thinking about plugging up holes.
Got a question you’d like to ask? Text or leave a voicemail at the Marginal Gains Hotline: +1-317-343-4506 or just leave a comment in this post!
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Could ‘The’ Replenisher (thanks Hottie) alone work with any real world benefit if added directly through the valve inside latex, TPU or other tubes for some degree of added puncture resistance or air loss benefit? Could dry and separate carbon fibres be added first through the valve if the fibre content is too low to be useful for these benefits using Replenisher alone?
Silca’s 2 sealant products would appear to have a neutral effect upon latex and rubbers more generally, and what about with TPU? A lightweight spare tube (of any type) could be pre-treated and also replenished as needed.
Many existing wheels can not meet or exceed the 105% rule with larger tires than an ‘old school’ 23mm version at best and especially with newer tubeless sizes.
Josh, you have said that no-one is putting any further development $s into non-tubeless options. Perhaps this could allow continued use of such wheelsets including tubular and those using rim brakes too which have all been abandoned for wider disc only variants in recent times.
We all understand about economic constraints upon bicycle companies to sell new product! How do we continue using these existing products to lower our future carbon footprints from the need for more high energy production to create more ‘modern’ replacements and therefore save the scraping of such ‘classic’ equipment and benefit from marginal gains thinking responsibly at the same time?
There are no issues with the sealant and tire liners being used together.
Hey! I’ve been a huge Slica fan for a long time now, and I have a quick question about the new sealant. I have been running the Vittora Air-Liners on pretty much all of my bikes. https://www.vittoria.com/us/en/bike-accessories/tire-inserts/air-liner-road
I was wondering if that would mess up the foam/sealant?! Thank you, and keep up the excellent work!!
@Matthew great question. You are likely going to be better off running a larger volume tire because the pressure printed on the rim as a limit should be adhered to.
I have a question for the next podcast, and this is a follow-up to Josh’s appearance on the Cycling Tips podcast: If I put my weight + bike (total ~160 lbs) into the Silca pressure calculator using 25c tires (so roughly 26mm measured width) & worn pavement (which is what we have in the Bay Area), I get recommended pressures of 84psi front and 86 psi rear.
With the hookless rim spec being a max of 73psi, does this mean that the narrowest tire I could run would be a 28mm? If so, how does this max tire pressure make any sense in the real world, given that I’m on the smaller side for male riders?
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