HELP! I lost my tube...

[Bogus Jim]

 

I've been thinking about going tubeless on the Tiger for a while now. Fixing a rear flat is such a pain on that bike. So Saturday I headed out to Ace Hardware to buy the necessary chemicals.

There are quite a number of different methods that have been tried for tubeless conversions - silicon, super glue, 3M sealant, plumber's goop, Gorilla tape, etc. None of them seem to have a 100% long-term success rate, as far as I can tell. I decided to try the method documented here : http://cyb.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/KTM/Tubeless/i-mT2KWZM

I cleaned up the rim with a wire brush, then hit it with brake cleaner, then scrubbed it once more with acetone. The rim needs to be squeaky clean so the adhesives will stick. Here's what I used: Seal-All and Plumbers Goop.




The small syringe is used to inject Seal-All down into the spoke nipple threads, and around the outside of the spoke nipple. This is a time-consuming process... you can only do 4 spokes at a time. If you rotate the rim to do more spokes, the Seal-All runs, so you have to wait for it to dry. Once the 2nd coat of Seal-All is dry, then you add a thicker coat of Plumber's Goop on top of that, in a circle around each spoke, roughly the size of a half dollar. This whole process took most of a Saturday and about a 6-pack of beer. 

I put the tire back on, sans tube, and aired it up. Gave it the "bath tub" test to see if any spokes were leaking. Everything looked good so threw the tire back on the bike. I'm going to let the sealant harden for a day or two before a test ride.

Here's the proof... a tubeless tire valve stem:




So, we'll see how it goes. I'm a little skeptical that it will hold up long term, seems like a lot of guys have tried, and end up going back to tubes after a while. But if it doesn't work, I guess I'm only out $10 and a day's work.

[Fletch]

It will be interesting to see how it works..