Tire sealant question

[CMAW]

I want to use tire sealant in my inner tubes for an upcoming tour (partly because removing the rear wheel on my Surly Ogre is a pita). Now, since I ride a mix of paved road and gravel tracks on my tours, up till now I fairly often have been adjusting the pressure in my tyres (between. 1,5 and 3 bar), depending on the terrain. Deflate for gravel etc, add pressure for asphalt, up to a few times per day. With sealant in the tubes (or tyres) that becomes impossible, no? You have to stick with a chosen amount of pressure because deflating the tyre will clog up the valve. Is there a way around this?

[Nearholmer]

Do you use valves with removable cores? I guess you must. If you do, and the valve is slow to release air because it is clogged, you can ease the core (not fully release it, and be careful not to accidentally get it blown out into the bracken in a wood), to increase the rate at which air comes out.

[CMAW]

Yes

[Nearholmer]

See my added words above.

[CMAW]

What happens with the sealant when you remove the valve core out of a pressurized tyre? No eruptive mess I hope?

[Nearholmer]

As I say, don’t remove the core completely, ease it, and if you do it while the valve is at the top, no chance of spitting sealant - even with it at the bottom you’ll only get spits (not an eruption), if you accidentally take the core out altogether.

[CMAW]

Thanks, I'll try that. And pack some extra valve cores.

[Nearholmer]

PS: I’m talking about sealant, as in liquid latex. It’s a long time since I used that horrible green slimey gunge, and that was definitely messier, but not to eruption levels of messiness.

[thirdcrank]

I want to use tire sealant in my inner tubes for an upcoming tour (partly because removing the rear wheel on my Surly Ogre is a pita). Now, since I ride a mix of paved road and gravel tracks on my tours, up till now I fairly often have been adjusting the pressure in my tyres (between. 1,5 and 3 bar), depending on the terrain. Deflate for gravel etc, add pressure for asphalt, up to a few times per day. With sealant in the tubes (or tyres) that becomes impossible, no? You have to stick with a chosen amount of pressure because deflating the tyre will clog up the valve. Is there a way around this?

I think the short - practical - answer to your question is "No"

My experience is not recent so I'm open to correction, but I'd say there are two main types of tyre sealant. One is slime, which goes into the tube from the outset (poured in by the user or tube sold with it in.) That sloshes around inside and seals punctures as they occur. Once the slime-filled wheel has rotated once, it will tend to seal the valve as though it were a puncture. Removing the valve core at the top of the wheel's rotation would reduce that but doing that would make your planned frequent pressure adjustments into a big deal.

The other is a sealant under pressure which both inflates the punctured tyre and repairs punctures. Obviously, these are single-use so useless for your needs

[Nearholmer]

Honestly, you can usually get controlled air release by just slacking off, not fully releasing, the core. It’s what I do before topping sealant up, because I have an aversion (rational or otherwise) to just winding the core out and letting it all go in a big puff.

I have to say that I very rarely mess about with pressure mid ride, because it is a bit of a faff, with a small % risk of going awry, so I ride at a compromise pressure that ‘just about does’ for the often very varied surfaces that I’ll cover in one ride. It’s like the tyres themselves, they’re a compromise too.

[tenbikes]

Fat bike riders nearly always go tubeless.

They are very very tuned in to tyre pressures and are likely to alter pressures several times in a ride.

When I ride in winter I'm likely to do this four times in a typical ride. I won't bore you with why, the point is any fears about sealant causing problems with the valve when deflating and pumping are completely groundless.

[rareposter]

I want to use tire sealant in my inner tubes for an upcoming tour (partly because removing the rear wheel on my Surly Ogre is a pita). Now, since I ride a mix of paved road and gravel tracks on my tours, up till now I fairly often have been adjusting the pressure in my tyres (between. 1,5 and 3 bar), depending on the terrain. Deflate for gravel etc, add pressure for asphalt, up to a few times per day.

You're far better off just finding a compromise pressure that's comfortable enough on gravel, fast enough on tarmac. A typical ride for me on my CX/gravel bike involves changing surfaces many many times a ride, from sometimes quite rough off road to towpath type terrain to lumpy/bumpy/broken roads to smooth roads and there's no way I'm stopping to adjust pressure every few minutes. The fractions that I'm slower on tarmac due to having marginally softer tyres than "ideal" is still way less than the time it'd take to stop, get the pump, inflate the tyre, put the pump away and start riding again.

With sealant in the tubes (or tyres) that becomes impossible, no? You have to stick with a chosen amount of pressure because deflating the tyre will clog up the valve. Is there a way around this?

Perfectly possible to adjust pressure as much as you want. Although see previous point above - find a compromise pressure and stick with it.

[CMAW]

As I said, it's for an upcoming tour — through Spain and into the Moroccan High Atlas. There is no compromise 'fits all' pressure: sand, rocky passes etc impose very low pressure and I'd go crazy on long stretches of tarmac on tires that are too soft. The compromise will be the tires themselves, although ideally I'd like to change those out a few times during the tour as well. So, it's nice to know that adjusting the pressure is possible without a serious risk of clogging the valve. I'll be bringing 'empty' spare tubes anyway. This will be my first experience with sealant (Stan's Notubes latex by the way) so I'll have to see how it goes.

[thirdcrank]

I hope your tour goes well. I'd have thought there would be benefit in trying out your plans close to home rather than waiting till you are in a foreign land, but you know your own comfort zone

[CMAW]

I'd have thought there would be benefit in trying out your plans close to home rather than waiting till you are in a foreign land

Is what I'm doing! Asked first, tried out myself after. Releasing a valve core partly or entirely, using the valve to deflate and inflate... Tried that a few times now and like most posters in this thread said: easy and failproof. If the valve clogs up over time, I'll have spares.