All sealant based tubeless designs and uses still have a bit of that 'Backyard inventor' feel to them and tinkering around and being willing to suffer a few mishaps along the way is a part of the learning curve to get the most out of them.
Liam, your "backyard inventor" comment is most insightful. Jim and I were musing about this over the past couple of days, and saying that if you look forward a few years, the tubeless bike tire will evolve into something like the car tire wrt. mounting, sealing, rim and bead profiles, etc.. There will be a single standard rim profile, standard valve type, standard tire bead profile to seat into the rim. The tires will be thin and light but made of tough and airtight compounds that will not require any sealant. The only sealant will be like when you get a car tire installed -- a single one-time swish application on the rim and bead when the tire gets mounted, that lasts years. Now that makes sense. All this messing around with liquids will be a thing of the past.
At present, UST is that standard, but it is not universally adopted yet, and has the drawback of being so much heavier and stiffer. When they figure out how to make a sub-600g UST tire (or even sub-700g), then people like myself (the late adopters; fence-sitters) will really take notice. That will basically remove all the obstacles that presently prevent us from going tubeless, which you've done a great job of highlighting for us.
Thanks for your help with all my questions. Very interesting feedback.
Cheers,
Svend
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