I have been on tubeless for 14 or more years for all bikes. Road, gravel and MTB.
I can’t imaging going back to clinchers and tubes. I have not had a road flat for more than 3 years.
OP has decided what he wants and some tubeless responses are amusing.
I recently switched from clinchers with a TPU tube to tubeless, and on the same line of tires and the same wheels, I noticed a lot more confidence taking speed into corners, I think in part due to lower pressure and in part due to tire composition. I like fast group rides, and being able to stay safe and fast in the corners has been really great. Besides sealing punctures, this has been the most obvious/apparent plus to having tubeless on my fast summer bike.
I don’t think that’s right, but based on your language, I’m guessing we may have to agree to disagree (which is fine—every technology has its supporters & detractors. I myself love tubeless for gravel and MTB and would even consider for road if I was running say 34mm tires, but I’m still on 28s).
Hopefully we can agree hookless should never have come to road rims so I’ll leave that aside. That being said, I’ve still seen tubeless tires come off hooked rims in regular, non catastrophic use (turns, small potholes, etc.). I’ve never seen the same with a clincher & tubes. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but I’ve never seen it. I have seen entire fields come down in amateur races because a 28mm tubeless tire came off a rim. Who knows about the extenuating circumstances - maybe they didn’t have the right tire size for the rim internal width, maybe they didn’t have sealant properly topped up, maybe they had too much pressure. I don’t know. To me it’s pretty clear that when it comes to <30mm road tires, one is far more dicey / requires far more attention to detail to set up correctly / even then doesn’t come with any speed advantage / may also likely result in you ubering home if you flat. I’ll pass.
You indicated you experienced a rapid loss of pressure with a latex tire, but I’m curious: were you able to come to a stop despite that / did the tire stay on the rim and help you do that?
Yes, but no. The tyre rolled off as I scrubbed the last couple of kph. This was a long time ago, on a rim braked MTB.
What has changed a lot is how well tubeless road tyres fit rims. In my experience, it now requires positive, and fairly concentrated effort to pop a tubeless bead over from the shelf to the well of a rim. I appreciate this can still be a bit hit and miss with regards tyre and rim combo, but I haven’t seen a ‘loose’ fit on a road tyre for a while.
I fully appreciate I am one person with a small sample size of tyres and rim, but I suspect tubeless tyres rolling off the rim is becoming less of an issue.
I know the world tour is a strange sample, but I’ve certainly heard of far fewer incidents of tyres separating from rims in the last 12-18 months, and there were only a handful prior to that.
I also fully appreciate that a rim failure could be more problematic with tubeless compared to tubed, assuming the cause of the failure doesn’t also result in the tube instantly deflating. I wonder how many tubeless blowouts have actually been rim failures due to an impact.
Hooked, Hookless, Tubed, Tubeless, all of them require air to retain the bead.
Tubeless/Hookless compatible rims/tires add substantially more bead seat interference, and require deliberate force to debead. I’ve even had tires that I couldn’t debead, and ultimately had to be cut off.
That said, I could remove and install tires on some of my old tube/clinchers comically easy and I’d be far less confident in the event of pressure loss on those.
(OP here)
I didn’t include the safety-aspect in my original post, as it is a whole debate in itself. Of course absolutely relevant, but still with so much to consider besides rr and weight, and a little bit puncture resistance, which is my primary concerns.
I do think hookless should not be used in road cycling, and I think we’ve seen too many accidents, some fatal, in professional racing.
Lennard Zinn, who I highly respect, thinks hookless rims are the main culprit, but do point to a couple of principal arguments against tubeless per se on road bikes. However, as I mentioned earlier, I feel confident going tubeless on three of my road and commuter bikes. I believe I run a relatively conservative setup (DT Swiss + Conti), but of course you can never be 100% sure.,