More comfort. As you don’t need to be worried about pinch flats, you can run your tires at lower pressures, which enhances your riding comfort and your grip because it increases your tire’s footprint. Having a flat tire is part of riding a bike, but as much as it’s part of the activity, a flat tire can ruin your ride in record time. Thankfully, there are a few ways to prevent flats, one of which is using sealant. Let’s find out whether putting sealant in your inner tube will help you prevent flats and help you ride worry-free. Even though I test loads of tubeless tyres, sealants and wheels on my own road bikes, I haven't bothered to make the change myself purely because I get very few punctures – maybe a couple every 10,000 miles – mainly down to the fact that I'm not bothered about running lower pressures for comfort.

Making a bigger hole saw the sealant take a little longer to plug the gap but it achieved it, although the pressure dropped from 90psi down to 50psi. That's still high enough to let you get home without stopping and give it a top up at home or fix/replace the tube. The temperature and the overall humidity of the area you’re based in could also play a role in how long the sealant will last in the tube. Ideally, if you have applied sealant to the inner tubes, the best place to store your bike is a relatively cool place. Minimal upfront cost. Both Slime and Muc Off make excellent quality sealants, and a small bottle is comparable to the price of a new inner tube.

Finish Line FiberLink Tubeless Tire Sealant

Sealant can be used both in a tubeless setup and with inner tubes as well. Both applications have their advantages and disadvantages. Let’s compare what these are. Sealant In Inner Tube You can use your favorite tire. Since there’s no need for a tubeless specific rim and tire, you can use your existing tire and put sealant in the inner tube. Use a tire with puncture protection. Although the sealant is designed to fix slow punctures, you should strive to minimize the chances of getting a puncture in the first place. Less protection. The inner tube is the weakest link in the chain (tire, tube and sealant), as it’s quite vulnerable and some punctures can’t be handled by the sealant as they are too big.

Step 4: Now fit the end of the filling tube onto the valve stem and with the bottle upside down, squeeze gently on bottle to dispense desired amount of sealant into the valve. Ensure sealant flows smoothly into the valve. (Fill the recommended amount for your inner tube using the dosage scale on the side of the bottle). Some factors, such as how often you ride your bike and where you store it and how many punctures it needs to fix may come into play in determining the lifetime of the sealant. High quality inner tube sealant is relatively maintenance free. Slime guarantees up to 2 years inside the tube, while Muc Off promises that the sealant will last the lifetime of the inner tube and it does not need to be toped up. In contrast with tubeless sealant, which needs to be topped up every 2-6 months.It’s important to remember that inner tubes with sealant are not invincible; it will not fix large punctures (4+mm in size) and punctures on the side of the tube that most commonly come from pinch flats. To prevent pinch flats from occurring, you need to run your tires at sufficiently high pressures, and if the road conditions are really hostile, you should consider using wider tires if possible. With a greater surface area, these tires are less likely to be impacted by sharp stones and potholes. How Long Does The Sealant Last In The Tube? However, if you are using Presta valves then that will be your first hurdle when it comes to installing it, as the bottle and kit are designed primarily for Schrader (car type) valves. Although you can use tubeless sealant in your inner tube, tube specific sealants are designed for your tube and they are going to last longer and do a better job at sealing punctures on your tubes. The best sealants made specifically for inner tubes are made by Slime and Muc Off. To start with, the bottle lid is a core remover but it only works on Schrader, so you'll need to have a Presta one in your tool kit or a small pair of pliers to unscrew the core.

Please Note: any reference to 'Royal Mail 24 ™' and 'Royal Mail 48 ™' are Official Royal Mail Service names and should not be interpreted as '24 Hour Delivery' and '48 Hour Delivery'. Don’t take chances. Just because you have puncture resistant tires and sealant in your inner tubes it doesn’t mean that you will get no flats. If you see thorns or sharp objects you should still avoid running over them. Fewer potential punctures. With no inner tube inside the tire you eliminate one type of puncture that even sealants can’t handle: pinch flats. These are a complete non-issue with tubeless tires. The water-soluble nature of the Inner Tube sealant requires more to be added to the tube than you would Muc-Off's tubeless sealant – about 90ml for a 700C tyre rather than 40ish, which obviously adds a bit of weight.Overall, the ability of Muc-Off Inner Tube Sealant to seal the typical sizes of punctures you get on the road is impressive, giving you many of the benefits of tubeless without the cost of getting everything set up. Verdict Performance-wise, Muc-Off says that it can seal up to 4mm holes and I'd say it is not far off that. I initially started testing things by piercing one tube with a drawing pin, and then making a small incision with a Stanley knife to a couple of millimetres in length, the kind of thing you'd get from a piece of flint.

Tires with Schrader valves all have removable cores, so putting sealant in them is very simple. All you need is a core remover, which is built into some sealants. Run your tires at higher pressure. Since sealants are not meant to deal with snake bites, you should pay special attention to running your tires at sufficiently high pressures. Low pressure increases your chances of getting pinch flats and punctures outside the tread area of the tire. Muc-Off has used some of the technology from its tubeless range to create the No Puncture Hassle Inner Tube Sealant, a sealant – as you can no doubt work out – for use solely with inner tubes. It doesn't seem to dry out and does a good job of fixing small holes, but the installation tube is too big for Presta valves.Once installed it is claimed to last the life of the inner tube, and after six weeks in some very high temperatures, as far as I can tell it is still sloshing around in the tube. As long as you have inner tubes with removable valve cores you can fill them up with this Muc-Off stuff. Nothing is completely failure-proof, and your sealant is not like a wild card that gets you out of every bad situation. There are some punctures that the sealant can’t handle, specifically those on the side of the tube and those on the tread area that exceed 3 mm in size. The main convenience of having a tubed tire with sealant is that of not having to stop for every single small puncture, but only for nasty large ones.