Mavic North America

The State Of Tubless-ness: (Tubeless Re-try)

A few years back, Mavic, Hutchinson, and Michelin got together and came up with a standard for a tubeless MTB rim/tire system that provided for a secure, air tight fit, good tire bead retention, and did not require any sealant to remain inflated. UST, the Universal System for Tubeless, was born and it was coolly received by North America riders (and in time, especially by 29″er folks) as the resulting rim choice was limited (licensing required from Mavic) and the tires were expensive and heavy, often weighing in at a 200-300 gram penalty. Time marched on and the UST ‘standard’ remained.

On this side of the pond, Stan’s No Tubes had another idea. They took a completely different approach and came up with a system of a latex based sealant and a rim strip/valve combo that converted a standard rim and standard MTB tire into a tubeless combo. It was not always that bombproof as some tires were better than others (and some rims as well) but the lightweight and versatile system found a big fan base. In time, Stan’s made a rim design that was meant to give good retention to a normal (non-tubeless designed) tire using a combination of a latex sealant and a rim tape to seal the whole mess. Stan’s became the go-to tubeless rim for the average Joe and Jill.

As well there was another main player, Bontrager, who came up with the TLR rim, tire and matching rim strip system. It worked very well, but mainly if you ran them as a system.

In garages across America, DIY folks were coming up with ‘ghetto’ tubeless (like using a 20” tube laid into a 29″er rim and cut to fit) solutions, often with mixed results.

The end result of all this was a bit of a mess in that there were now many ways to do this and really no clear, universally accepted way of going tubeless. The consumer was left on their own to figure it all out. UST was never going to take off due to the heavy and expensive tires. Stan’s deal was only as good as the particular tire you chose and the skill of the installer. And, the thing is this…it is not just that a poorly matching tire/rim combo would be difficult to seat on a rim or that it would not hold air well…that would be annoying…but it also could be deadly if the poor match allowed a tire to blow off of a rim at speed. It happened all too often.

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