Adventures in Cyclocross Tubeless

This cyclocross sesason, I decided to go tubeless. I've suffered enough pinch flats over the years to know that tubes were out of the question, and I was not willing to make the investment in tubulars, especially after seeing some of the horrific results of failed glue. After a half season of racing and a couple mishaps, I think I finally have the tubeless thing figured out.

In order to get the Race Lite wheels on my Chronus working in a reliable tubeless setup, I purchased a NoTubes Cyclocross tubeless conversion kit, extra roll of yellow tape, and NoTubes Raven tires. The tires might not have been necessary, but I figured I’d use them since they are actually designed to work tubeless. I initially set everything up using all items in the conversion kit and went for a test ride at 40 psi front and rear. The test ride revealed that 40 psi was not enough to keep 200 pounds of man and machine from bottoming out. In the end, I settled on 43 psi front and 47 rear. A relatively low speed parking lot figure eight test resulted in some slight burping in the rear. One of the key’s to prevent burps is to use tape to build up the rim center channel thickness to a point where the tire can still hook the rim bead, and isn’t too tight to mount. It turned out that the yellow tape supplied in the NoTubes kit wasn’t enough, so I added thickness with a layer of electrical tape on top of the roll of yellow tape that I had already used on the wheels.

Everything worked fine for the first few races, and then I did a race with some very fast and rough off camber corners and managed to burp both front and rear tires. I examined the setup again and decided that the electrical tape was insufficient, so I removed it and bought a second role of NoTubes yellow tape. I used the entire roll, half on the front, and half on the rear. In the end, it resulted in an entire roll of yellow tape being used on each rim beneath the rim strip.

I don’t think any tubeless setup is completely burp proof, but one thing CX racing taught me this year is that the ultimate burp test involves locking the rear wheel while skidding around a rough off-camber corner. After numerous tests and one race, I’m pretty confident in the setup. Now, back to the motor…

Omar