Ultimate Tubeless Sealant Development

This article takes you inside the development of SILCA Ultimate Tubeless Sealant, engineered for riders who demand the best sealing power and unmatched longevity.

We are launching our new edition of SILCA Ultimate Tubeless Sealant with Injectable Fiberfoam. After 2.5 years of research, development, and testing have gone into this particular project, we are so excited to release what is a major upgrade and a first of its kind.

This new sealant isn't just an upgrade; it's designed to seal faster than other sealants and stay active longer, so you spend more time riding and less time worrying.

Compared to other sealants, the original formula already delivered the best sealant power, but riders wanted something even more capable for everyday riding.

Three years ago, we released the SILCA sealant, the highest-performing sealant on the market. Every independent test has shown it has the highest power available. Why create just another sealant when the whole point is to seal punctures before they can end your day?

There were plenty of attempts at creating a similar product in the past, but we were able to take a look at the market and take the best parts of other products and combine them. This gave us a slightly longer-lasting latex blend for longevity, carbon fiber for sealing power, and a foaming agent to bring those fibers to the puncture. We saw absolutely incredible sealing power that all of our pros were extremely excited to run because they knew it gave them the best chance of getting to the line with air in their tires possible. That doesn't mean it didn't come without some drawbacks.

After the extensive feedback from the pros being overwhelmingly positive, we heard three main pieces of feedback from our customers.

1. I want to be able to inject the sealant

2. I don't want to worry about my sealant every two months. It needs to last longer

3. The two-step system is too complicated

We knew through our own testing that these were really difficult, if not impossible, problems to solve if you aren't willing to compromise on the sealing power. Never unwilling to take on a daunting problem, we set out for what ended up being the next two and a half years to solve these problems. We started the project with the two goals of:

1. Zero Compromises on sealing performance

2. Meet the three customer demands listed above

If we couldn't do these two things, there was no need to create a new product because we felt like there were plenty of mediocre sealants on the market that would seal some punctures some of the time. Riders loved the performance but needed a formula with more life, easier maintenance, and a way to replenish sealant without hassle. If you are looking for a low to medium performance product that is set it and forget it, we don't need to add to that list of products. We are really only interested in the highest performance products at every level.

Making the sealant last longer wasn't an easy task, but we had a bunch of ideas to test. The most difficult part of testing sealant longevity is that it takes a really long time. If you want a sealant that can reliably last six months, you need at least six months. If that one doesn't work, you are back to square one to start again.

Our previous edition would last three months pretty reliably in ideal conditions. If you left your bike on the balcony, lived at elevation, had certain tires, used a compressor with rusty water in it or CO2 to inflate the tire, etc, it could drive that down to a pretty short time period.

After tons of different latex blends to look at potential longevity solutions, we settled on an industry first of a natural and synthetic latex blend. We saw some really promising early results, but also some odd interactions, so we went about testing all sorts of combinations of types of both, as well as the blend. The ultimate formula we have seen last well over six months, over and over again, with multiple riders, conditions, etc. Some we have seen last over a year. 

Our need for a two-step system was due to the complication of trying to accomplish a longer-lasting sealant and get around the injectability problem. If we could solve those two problems with one formula, then we could eliminate the need for two products.

We already covered how we created a sealant that could do just that, so the only real question is "Did we lose any sealing power?" That brings us to the testing process.

Like we said earlier, testing a product that needs to perform for 6+ months is extremely time-consuming. Since longevity wasn't the only goal, we could split this into a few parts and start with the two goals that are quicker to test.

1. Does it still seal?

2. Is it injectable?

Every one of the dozens of formulas we ended up trying after we got to a prototype phase had to pass the lab tests before they were ever included in the longevity portion. This really helped us not waste time finding out that test version 22 lasted 14 months but couldn't seal a puncture better than others, or had trouble getting injected. Every single formula was injected to start the setup, then tested to seal repeatable 7mm punctures within a single tire rotation in the stand. There ended up being 8 formulas that passed this initial test, meaning we could move on to the longevity testing.

Now that we had formulas that we knew passed the initial testing, we set about to find as many test riders as we could to get them into the field. Our own Travis Verhoff was participating in Unbound Gravel in 2023 for the first time, and with the confidence that it would seal, it would be the first event in which it was tested. 

We went about testing with employees, athletes, and close friends of the company to get as many wheels set up for testing as possible. After a couple of months, we got feedback that a couple of the formulas had some clumping issues, so we tossed those to the side and replaced them with the formulas we were having more success with. 

This started to narrow it down, and we had one that would last over 6 months, but the elevation seemed to cause some issues. This was actually expected, but you never know for sure until it is tested. Ultimately, all of our test riders ended up converging on a single formula that was meeting all of our goals. 

With the convergence on this single formula, we gave it another 6 months of testing, and put it through its paces at Unbound 200, Leadville 100, Big Sugar Gravel, among others, and saw the same incredible sealing performance we had come to expect, and got some of our test riders over the 1-year mark with liquid still plenty in the tires. The life of the seal was officially extended. It was at this point that we knew we had hit the mark and had to go full gas to get this produced at a scale to launch in time for the 2025 season.

Ready to level up your gear? Grab the new SILCA Ultimate Tubeless Sealant and turn every ride into a guaranteed finish.