Everything Mountain Bikers Need to Know About Tubeless Tires and Rims [Podcast]

Mike Bush is the President of Stans, a brand whose founder Stan Koziatek pioneered the use of tubeless tires in mountain biking. Today the Stans brand® designs and markets its own line of popular wheels and tubeless tire accessories to keep mountain bikers rolling.

In this episode we ask:

Why did it take so long for tubeless tire tech to become widely-adopted for mountain biking?
How does tubeless tire sealant work?
Has the Stans sealant formulation changed much over the years to improve performance or to make it more environmentally friendly?
What are the tradeoffs involved in designing a tire sealant?
Have tire companies had to adjust their formulations and manufacturing processes to improve tubeless performance, to prevent weeping for example?
What’s your take on mountain bike tire inserts?
Is there another way to address the remaining shortcomings of tires and rims that doesn’t involve inserts?
How have rim designs evolved over the past several seasons?
Do you think the 30mm rim width becoming pretty standard for most mountain bike applications?
Is a rim’s bead socket a weak point in terms of sealing tubeless tires?
What are some of the ways Stans optimizes rim design to work with tubeless tires?
Is carbon a superior material for building mountain bike rims? Why or why not?
What took so long for mountain bike tire plugs to become mainstream?
What makes the Stans Dart tool unique?
Do you have any tips or tricks for dealing with tire issues on the trail?
Is there a better way to connect tires and wheels, assuming the whole industry agreed to work together? Are there any existing standards that are a barrier to future innovation?
What are some of the current problems with mountain bike wheels and/or tires that Stans is focused on solving in the future?

Learn more at notubes.com.

Interview transcript

Jeff Barber 1:10
It’s been almost 20 years since Stan first designed his tubeless tire sealant. What has it taken to get us to this point where tubes are pretty much all but forgotten in mountain biking?

Mike Bush 1:24
Yeah, it’s been a long road. I would say the number one thing that’s gotten us to this this point is just simply rider demand. You know, we started, you know, early, early days. Ust had just come out. Stan had some existing wheels that weren’t USD thought tubeless would’ve been pretty cool thing to have on his bike, but there were limited tire options, and weight was a factor, and a bit of a weight weaning in those days, and so on. And he was looking for that better way to do things, kind of with what’s on hand, or can we create something, and so on. And he started playing around with different, very basic sealant formulations at the time and how to seal an existing spoked wheel to be airtight. And, you know, as that word got out and they were doing, he and his wife Cindy, that started a company where we’re doing some racing on the East Coast. You know, other racers hear about it. Eventually. Pro riders hear about it. Of course, they were trying and sort of sneaking it. They didn’t want other people to know. But once you experience tubeless in a self ceiling type, tubeless system of that nature, there’s, there’s no going back of course, trials and tribulations in the early days, early pioneers and so on. But it was, it was that right or demand. I mean, nobody likes a flat tire. There’s never a good day to have a flat on the trail in the race.

Jeff Barber 2:41
Well, even in the early days, though, was it, was it like as reliable as it is now, and like as much of a no brainer, or back then, was it like there were maybe more trade offs, or like it was a little riskier? How have we gotten to this point where everybody just kind of accepts, like, yeah, that’s a better way to go?

Mike Bush 3:01
Yeah, I think more difficult for sure, in those days, tires weren’t designed for it. We were adapting a lot of standard tube type tires to the tubeless application, by way of modifying rims essentially, right? So rim design has come a long way. We’ve been a big part of that. And you know, as writers push their limits a little bit, they’re always seeking a better version. Now, it’s easier, inflates, easier, so and so forth. But this is like any new innovation technology product, you know, you have to cross that, that chasm, as they say, a great book on that, you know, you’ve got to get the early adopters going and moving along, and that helps you chase the majority and eventually it spreads.

Jeff Barber 3:48
To a lot of us, tubeless tire sealant is basically just like magic. So can you give us a high-level explanation for how the stuff actually works, how it actually seals a punctur in a tire.

Mike Bush 4:01
So our sealant, in some ways, is not different than a lot of others. We go about it in a different way, perhaps, but effectively, what you’re doing is using a liquid or something close to it to transport some sort of particulate to the puncture site. So for us, we like a very thin, sort of milking consistency, because we want to have the liquid reach the puncture very quickly. So when you have that puncture on the trail, we want it to flow fast as liquid, the liquid enters the puncture site. And the nature of the latex is that it effectively is clotting when it’s exposed to the outside air. There’s a pH imbalance going on there, and begins to clot in those particulates, or like the platelets in your blood or something, are following in and clogging the hole. So effectively, using that air pressure to just jam that hole full of stuff, allowing the outside air to begin to cure it.

Jeff Barber 4:57
So it’s partially like a physical process, like something is jamming the hole, but it also sounds like it’s a chemical process, and you’re saying that the air outside the tire is different from the air inside the tire. How does that happen?

Mike Bush 5:13
We have a highly humidified environment and so on that you’re dealing with when you have that liquid introduced to the tire, and then there is an outsider every time you inflate the tire and so on, that’s what’s causing it to slowly dry out. And, you know, evaporation taking place through the casing and so on. But every time you introduce that air, they gotta get into this a little more, but a CO two or something of that nature can cause that reaction to start taking place. And of course, there’s a lot of CO two around us in the outside environment. That’s exactly the chemical nature of it. And then, like, say, the physical is you’re just trying to jam as much stuff into that hole as you can.

Jeff Barber 5:52
There are obviously a lot of competitors in the tubless tire sealant space. And one of the things that some of them are doing is like claiming to offer a more environmentally friendly solution, or offer some kind of performance boost over sort of these more mainstream tuba sealants, like stands. So has the stand sealant formulation changed much over the years?

Mike Bush 6:17
If you go all the way back to the beginning 2000 or so. Yeah, it’s changed since then. The very the very first sealant products we were selling were literally just some natural latex that other people seemingly couldn’t access as easily around the country, an instruction sheet that said, add some water and some windshield washer fluid and good luck. Effectively, what sealant was in 2000 it did work. Obviously we wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. But since then, we’ve taken a deep dive on the chemistry side of things. And, you know, we source the latex from a different place now, and there were adjustments made to the chemistry of what we purchase in that sense, and we use some different additives than than we did in the past. That are, you know, food grade, safe for the environment, so on and so forth. Those are have all been incorporated the the particulate has largely been the same through the years, but we added something to the commercial product line, which was our race formulation a few years back, something we always tested with our proteins and worked on and so on, and that was kind of what was the next level stuff. So under our SRD, or Stan’s Racing Development tag, we eventually brought that race formulation to the masses, which has been incredibly, incredibly popular. Unfortunately, we mix that one basically by hand. Wow, not something we want to make a ton of right now, but it is very, very effective as that race day sealant, and that carries twice as much of our regular particulate and then an additional larger particulate with a really big punctures. The downside is a bit more maintenance intensive. You can’t put it through the valve stem and so on. So it’s not for everybody, but that’s just one example of sort of a formula addition, maybe not a change in that sense. But yeah, yeah, we’ve adapted to the needs of the customers in that sense.

Jeff Barber 8:17
What other kinds of trade offs do you have to consider when you’re designing a tire sealant. I mean, I imagine, you know, if we wanted, like, the most environmentally friendly thing, like, it would basically be water, right? And it wouldn’t work. What other kinds of things like that do you have to consider that you can’t really change because then it wouldn’t, just wouldn’t work as well?

Mike Bush 8:38
You have to have that clotting agent of some sort, you know, some, some old school sealants were just basically a gelatinous mess that just tried to fill the hole and so on. Very sticky tire shops didn’t want to touch them, that sort of thing. So as that kind of automotive influence product is, you know, fallen out of favor with the bike crowd. You see these thinner sealants and things that flow nicely and carry the particulate. And we all have, we all enjoy the environment. We ride our bikes in and like being out in it. And we have, across the board, pretty good sense for the fact that that’s what our customers want to environmentally friendly stuff. So we look at the additives that we use in that sense, but the big trade off you have to make there is longevity in the tire versus puncture protection. So our take is that puncture protection is a must for sealant. There isn’t much reason to use it. Otherwise, the longevity balance comes in with Sure, we could make it last a really long time, but you decrease puncture protection there they are, proposing variables there. So what we try to do is strike that balance with our standard formulation. We could make it last a little longer, but you’ll just function protection so on. We wanted the enhanced puncture protection, so we brought the race formulation now where it doesn’t last as long, it dries out a little bit quicker. It has a tendency to sort of snowball inside the tire with those larger particles, and then it requires that more maintenance we mentioned previously. So it’s really that longevity versus bunch of protection. Some people have a different take on it than we do, but we want to make sure we conceal the hole first.

Jeff Barber 10:27
Several years ago, it seemed like a lot of the brand new tires that people would buy kind of off the shelf, would just leak sealant through their pores. Have tire companies had to adjust their formulations and manufacturing processes to improve tubas performance, or is it the other way around? Have the sealants had to adapt to sort of how tires are put together?

Mike Bush 10:49
I think it’s a little bit of both. For sure, tire companies have been making a lot of improvements on all sorts of aspects of our modern day tires. There’s no question What do you refer to there? We would just call it seeping. You know, where you’re seeing some, some component of the sealant seeping through the sidewalls. So I can’t speak necessarily to the specific actions they may have taken. Obviously, so many tire manufacturers out there with different approaches to things, but we do private label for several tire manufacturers produce Tire Seal for them, and we know that they have done some things, whether it’s in formulation, it could be in the mold, release the type of airbag they use during the molding. There are things we did with some tires we had produced years ago. Obviously we didn’t make them directly. They were made for us, but working with that manufacturer to reduce the size of the font on the lettering that’s required to be molded into the sidewall, so you have a tire casing that’s coated in rubber, and when you mold the tire, it’s a negative space to fill those letters, so it draws that rubber off the side wall off the casing, and the more does that, the more it can leak through those spots. So we just simply reduce the height of the font. It’s a required marking, so move as much of those markings onto the tire hot patches, so where your graphics and so on are contained. Yeah, that you’re legally allowed to do, just to eliminate potential leak sources and and we did some other interesting things that weren’t necessarily production possibilities, but we’ve learned a lot about how that conceal better. And then again, on the sealant side, and these private label manufacturers and some others we’ve talked to, they would see seeping from customers, and, of course, treated as warranty claims, and wanted to know what we could do about it, looked into it and adjusted a little bit. But honestly, we don’t get that complaint a lot. We didn’t back then, and we don’t today. I think in part, if a tire manufacturer has their own sealant brand and their tire, there’s nobody else to call if they’re leaking through, right? It’s the sealant or the tire? Well, either one of us can get the phone call with different brand names on them, so yeah, we haven’t seen a lot of that. I mean, personally, sure we’ve seen the West spots from the seeping, and there are a lot of lot of improvements made at the tire that have certainly contributed to reducing that seeping.

Jeff Barber 13:20
Everybody agrees that flat tires suck when you’re mountain biking and going tubeless, obviously is going to reduce the risk of that happening on the trail. And one of the things we’re seeing today is a number of companies offering tire inserts as sort of a another partial solution to flats and rim strikes. What’s your take on these products?

Mike Bush 13:43
I think tire inserts are pretty interesting as a whole. They’re obviously not all created equal. Some some have different intents and purposes and so on, and convey certain benefits to the riders. Some are more XC focused versus the enduro and downhill focus. Maybe of the earlier products, I think there are a number of positives that come from insert use. That’s not to say everything’s perfect, though we had done some early testing with one particular insert, and found in imPACT testing, we do some pretty aggressive imPACT testing up a bit, but in some of that impact testing, we would see what was normally a very direct point load with like a wedge type anvil. Okay, the room dents are inch flaps and so on, depending on the tire construction and so forth. When the insert was introduced, we didn’t see that direct point load, very sharp impact, but we saw it dispersing that energy over a much greater space. Ultimately, that’s the gold insert to protect your room, but it would actually create this large flat spot in the room, rather than this just simple dent. So large flat spots much harder to. To take out of an aluminum wheel after the fact. Yeah, it’s largely garbage at that point, scrap metal, but a simple, direct point load. In fact, a lot of people, right or wrong, will bend that back and use the rim until they get a second or third incident along those lines. So we did see that happening a bit. And what, I think one of the other insert issues we’ve come across, not too many of them actually absorb sealant. It can happen, of course, if it’s more of a open cell, of course, foam that’s being used. But depending on how it contacts the sidewalls, how far up the sidewall it actually reaches, whether there’s any channeling or anything integrated to the insert, is it will prevent sealant from reaching those lower portions closer to the rim. So it is still possible to pinch flat insert install, just as it’s possible to pinch but a tubeless tire, even though there’s no tube involved, when that happens, you can’t get sealant to that puncture unless the right the insert has some channeling or something, and not all of them do, and not all of them make a lot of contact with the sidewall, but some some that do that can be a challenge. I think the modular nature of an insert is really nice. So if you like them and want to reuse them, just add them to your setup. If I don’t, I can leave them out. It’s pretty convenient. What happens a lot of times with like our AWS team, you know, one of them sponsored by pushcor, the GT team, Martin May is one of the top riders in world. He’ll run a lighter front wheel. He’ll use our mark three front wheel without an insert, and he’ll run our heavier D rear wheel. Ex three, the flow. Ex three with Crash core insert. It tends to be harder on rear wheels. Those guys are approaching some crazy speeds on some tough terrain. That’s the setup that works for him. So he doesn’t have to run the heavier tire on both ends or do different things that way he can really tailor his to kids needs. And you know, that applies to the rest of us too. So I think that modular nature is really, really good. Yeah, I would also say, though that inserts to me. I personally had a kind of a negative reaction when they first came out was, this looks like a band aid to a system that should have better rims and tires.

Jeff Barber 17:26
That was going to be my next question was, was sort of, is there a better way to address the shortcomings of tires and rims that doesn’t involve inserts and and also, you know, hearing you talk too, I’m wondering if, now that inserts exist, now that it’s a thing that people are running, and some of them are choosing to run, does that influence rim design at all?

Mike Bush 17:50
I think it does. And can continue to influence rim design, and it’ll probably influence tire design and see a lot of new casings, whether it’s from shore or Maxis or what have you. Some of the bigger, bigger ones to come along. Kenda has the apex type inserts as well, which is a butyl insert just above the bead. And they’re they’re trying to do some of what inserts do, which is protect from pinch glass. It doesn’t necessarily bring the stability and so on that. You know, these purported benefits of other inserts, but certainly there have to be better ways to do what we’re doing today. There’s always a better mousetrap down the line somewhere. Yeah, you know, we’ll have some R D projects continuing in this field as well. Again, pinch flats you can deal with with sealant or with plugs and so on. But ultimately, it’s better if we don’t happen.

Jeff Barber 18:45
You mentioned that in your tests, finding the mode of impact and damage is different when someone’s running inserts. But I guess I also get the feeling from you that that doesn’t affect sort of your, you know, warranty process or, like, even your recommendation to riders, like, should they run them or not? You know, is that a factor? Is that something that people should consider, or that that you consider as a brand?

Mike Bush 19:15
We haven’t changed any any stance on warranty or anything of that nature. I mean, there are so many, it’s like stealing brands. There are so many of them out there, it’s hard to keep up with it’s the same thing with with inserts. And we’ll never deny somebody a warranty or a crash replacement or something because they used an insert instead of not. But I think there are, there are certain instances where they might have been better off without it.

Jeff Barber 19:41
Tell us a little bit about how rim designs have evolved over the past several seasons. You know, for a while it was about widths, and I know Stan’s offers a wide range of RIM widths, internal widths. Is we’re talking about, but, but, yeah, kind of walk us through how rim design has evolved recently.

Mike Bush 20:06
Yeah, I think the wind thing certainly went crazy. That’s, that’s what mountain bikers like to do. We go to, we go to win extreme and then have to back off later. Yeah, for the most part. You know, we produced a rim that was 50 millimeters wide at one time, not necessarily for fat bikes and that sort of thing. Wow. Yeah, well, we probably still have something to eat, but I think the you know, there’s always a focus on weight. Nobody likes carrying more weight around than necessary, but that’s gone a little bit by the wayside. I think it will come back to some extent, as we started chasing with the desire was to keep the weights in the same range. And we said, you know, you can’t have both. You’re going to lose some durability here, if that’s really the case. And today’s bikes, and you know, from XC through downhill, to really have a strong focus on durability and reliability, right, and not cutting every gram. So I think there’s, there’s some stuff going on there. We’ve had better access to more advanced alloys. Almost all of us are dealing with an Asian supplier for for extrusion or rims, select few options in the US and within Europe and so on. But just better alloys there have helped us deal with that we issue. Can we do thinner walls, sections and things of that nature, better, better processing and manufacturing to control tolerances have been a factor in improving rims the last few years. And obviously the boon for us is an even better understanding of how that tubeless seal is created and maintained between the tire and rims. I think that’s been it’s been big for us. Obviously, that’s what we based our whole rim and wheel design around. But a lot of other manufacturers have brought that as well. So I think, you know, 10 years ago, and maybe we were one of the two or three tubeless rooms that really worked, and now it’s hard to find one that doesn’t work. Yeah, pretty well, honestly, not all of them are perfect. I think there’s, there’s some that are actually kind of bad, but at the same time, the vast majority are pretty good these days, I think you’re seeing more rims now that have just the flat bead seat, which is something we’ve done from day one. So that portion where the beads actually rest when the tires inflated, you know, the UST design that was the first to tubeless, had the large bumps on the beach seats, a lot of people followed suit with either USD license type design or something like it, and the newer rims now, from even on the road, zip and Mavic and so on, have done away with the bumps. We all know that they aren’t really necessary. I think you’ve seen a lot of rims with some shorter sidewalls, which is, again, something we pioneered. So not too darn hard there, but that’s where a lot of our IP is based. We have seven patents in the US around short sidewall designs and so on. So I think we’ve seen a lot come that direction, and that allows for the tire to take a more natural shape. And the further you move that sidewall down, the less chance of pinch flatting, and you reduce the leverage on the center of the room, so you can make a thinner section and so on so forth. So I’ve seen that on some other rooms out there, and then probably the big one would be the straight side, or hopeless designs. That’s obviously happened in the last few years. And starting with the carbon rims in particular, because it did allow for easier and better molding, easier manufacturing. So that’s come, I would say, a long way, and the realization that that hook at the top didn’t really help with tire retention that comes from properly sized rim and tire, the hook isn’t necessary, obviously. See it on some aluminum product. And so now we’re for manufacturing. It doesn’t make a big difference, but it can still allow the tire to take a better natural shape and a little bit thicker sidewall to help preventing pinch flats and that sort of thing.

Jeff Barber 24:18
It seems like the rim, sort of the bead socket, if you will, is kind of the point of differentiation in terms of, like a tubeless tire setup, because seems like that’s a really vulnerable point where you’re going to be getting flats from pinch flats or burping. Is that kind of what Stans has found over the years?

Mike Bush 24:40
Yeah, we actually, you know, had termed our our little portion of that rim, so beat seat to sidewall, and the lack of a large, bulbous type hook on there as a beat socket. We envision that check to measure, of course, but that tire beat is interacting with with the rim and more of a socket fashion, rather than. You look back at old patent drawings and even old marketing information, you’ll see this bead floating off of the bead seed and be retained by the bulbous hook and so forth. And refer to that as like the bead float gap that does happen if things aren’t sized properly, yeah, and we’ve backed that up with CT scans and so on, to see how much and how different it can be with the decentering of the tire on the rim. Yeah, it does happen. So that beat socket is the critical point of interaction between the tire and the rim, and something we focus on, not solely, but very much so in our designs.

Jeff Barber 25:38
Before we move on from from talking about rim and rim designs, is 30 millimeters, sort of that width becoming pretty standard for mountain bike applications. I mean, it seems like we’re seeing, you know, new bikes that come out, from XC to enduro, really, they’re all right around 30 millimeters. Do you think there’s sort of consolidation happening around that number?

Mike Bush 26:01
Yeah, I hesitate to say standard. That’s a real word in our industry.

Jeff Barber 26:05
Bbut it could be good or bad, right? I mean, we need standards, but not a lot of them.

Mike Bush 26:11
It does seem that things have gravitated toward 30. You know, I’ve been, I’ve been grinding for 25 plus years now. Kind of hurts to say. But, you know, cross country back then was a 1.9 tire, 2.0 maybe, if you were lucky. And that changed over time, of course, for cross country and on the more aggressive gravity focused. It was a 235, and it was a two, four and two five and so on. Downhill seemed to settle in a long time ago on a tire with and if you look across all the available tires cross country has moved now toward a two, three, or some cases, to four, even at the World Cup level. Yeah. So to support that tire in the best way possible, we have room. Has to get a bit wider. Is 30 the perfect number for everybody? No, I don’t think necessarily that it is. We still see really strong sales of our our crest as an example for the cross country room at 23 millimeters wide, and we’ve seen our flow at 30 really close the gap in terms of falling for us. But we also see World Cup pro downhill riders not wanting 30. They want something just a bit smaller. 28 would probably be ideal. We don’t have that today, but that’s kind of some of them would want. So yeah, I mean 30s maybe the happiest spot since we’re all running a two, four to two, six tire now, right? But I don’t think it’s necessarily the perfect option for everything yet.

Jeff Barber 27:40
Racing, for sure, is gonna, seems like it’s gonna be an extreme, you know, if you’re talking about that level. But for trail riding, yeah, it does seem like that tire width is, is what people want, and so that therefore is gonna kind of dictate what rim they’re gonna want to work with it, right?

Mike Bush 28:01
As I mentioned earlier, you know, width and weight kind of go together and along with the durability, so you can’t have it all. And does that mean in 30 mil, we can only do carbon to keep the weight in check, and that’s not accessible for everybody. So to get the the benefit of the wider tire and so on, how do you do that in a $300 wheel set?

Jeff Barber 28:26
Speaking of weight and carbon and expensive, is carbon superior material for building mountain bike rims? Is it, you know, like, if you could afford it, is it? Is it better in all ways, or are there some disadvantages, perhaps, to using carbon over aluminum?

Mike Bush 28:46
If you take price point out of it, that closes the gap, I’m sure. But I think there’s still the horses for courses situation, every application and riding style and where you’re riding needs to be considered as well. So my basic view is that the ideal rim is one that meets the customers needs and expectations, and if that means they’re racing enduros, where if you have a mishap, you know, you hit the rock incorrectly, not as you planned that, racing incorrectly, yes, yes, and you’ve done some damage. If you dent that aluminum rim or knock it severely out of true, you get to the bottom of the hill, you whack it back into shape, and you get onto your next stage before you know time penalty kicks in or something, where, if you t bone that log and your carbon wheel cracked, there’s not a lot you can do at that point your day is over. So, you know, we see it again on EWS riders, a lot of them run aluminum. For that fact, they all try some carbon. Some still run them, of course. But in a lot of cases, they backed off the carbon and went back to aluminum. And then you have feel there’s a different feel between the. Um, we’ve had some, some very accomplished test riders say that I don’t like this carpet wheel because it is too stiff, either laterally or vertically, and it causes me to deflect off the line where I know that the aluminum is going to give a little bit. I feel like I get a little more bite from a tire when the wheels kind of conforming with it. So again, riding style plays into it quite a bit.

Jeff Barber 30:23
You mentioned though that with carbon, you’re able to get maybe sort of different shapes, or it’s easier to get different shapes and profiles for the rim than with aluminum. Is that? Does that make carbon better in terms of manufacturing or or or is it just that aluminum is, I don’t know, more complicated sometimes?

Mike Bush 30:47
They both have their challenges, that’s for sure. So with carbon, if you’re not using a well and style or something of that nature, you’re doing individually, hand laid pieces, you can tailor every last aspect of that layup, for the characteristics you’re chasing when you want really thick spoke bed at the spoke holes, so it never has a failure there. You can do it if you want a lot of compliance vertically and maintain lateral stiffness. You can do it. You can change every little piece of that layup and get pretty much anything you want within certain limits. With aluminum, you’re dealing with an extrusion that has to be homogenous, developed and outside of something like what Matic did with their external machining, or AC maybe with Crank Brothers, and some of the things they did around how the spokes were mounted and so on. There’s not a lot you can do to really tweak that profile, it’s going to be the same throughout. And that’s not to say that they’re bad, but that it’s all bad. But you have to consider things like, how do you join the room? If it’s if it’s an inexpensive room with steel pins that join, then you have to have channels that go all the way around. You can’t just have those channels at the joint location. So there comes the weight. If it’s a welded rim, you can’t have a really, really thin spot next to a really thick spot where the weld will burn through. So there’s a lot of things to consider in that profile design for aluminum that are factors in carbon. Carbon brings a whole nother assortment of issues, whether it’s how you know, what’s the compaction rate, you know? What are the voids? What? What resins are we using, and how they deal with impact, and is it cured properly? And so on and so forth. So, yeah, they both have challenges. That’s for sure. A lot of people have tried to get into the wheel game as maybe bike manufacturers are just sandal and wheel brands, and at some point, say, maybe we’ll just leave this to the wheel guys.

Jeff Barber 32:47
Tires have been getting punctures since people started riding bikes, really. And you know, we’ve had tuba sealant for a long time now, thanks, thanks to Stan. But what took so long for mountain bike tire plugs to become mainstream? It feels like just within the last year or two, we’ve seen this product becoming more mainstream. There are dozens of companies offering tubeless tire plugs, including stands. Now, what took so long for people to figure out that this worked?

Mike Bush 33:25
Well, I don’t know if it’s an issue figure out that it worked. It was just reaching that majority of riders where you can start justifying doing the extra bits and pieces that we would all like to have and so on. I can remember the first time I used the rubber baking strip, like on tire plugs was probably, I still lived in New York at the time, so probably 12 plus years ago.

Jeff Barber 33:49
Oh, wow. I’m in the media, and we haven’t seen them for that long. It doesn’t seem like it, or maybe, maybe just my sense of time is off.

Mike Bush 34:01
A friend that owned a bike shop up there, and he was an early adopter to tubeless Jeff at Cayuga cyclone Ithaca, and he said, What about these rope things? And that’s what we call it at the time, where the rope like, I don’t know that’s, let’s try it. And we started using on the trail. And I remember using on a trip to Moab back then. Yeah, they did work. And I think now that you know tubeless celebration survey were something like 80% of the mountain bikers surveyed were tubeless. Now I remember not too long ago, and it was only 20%.

Jeff Barber 34:33
It flipped yeah into a pretty sizeable majority.

Mike Bush 34:37
Sealant doesn’t fix every hole every time, whether it’s from lack of maintenance, whether it’s a really big cut, just some bad luck, what have you, it doesn’t get every puncture, and I wish it did, but in the instances that it doesn’t, the plugs are pretty effective. You know, we had a unique take on it, but I. And, yeah, I think as a matter of time and getting that majority into tubeless before you start kind of bringing on all the accessories and other things.

Jeff Barber 35:09
I remember seeing a video. I mean, this must have been at least 10 years ago, probably more of it. And I think it was Stan in the video, doing a demonstration of tubeless tire sealant. And he was, like, stabbing this tire with, like, a knife, and, you know, nails and like, all kinds of stuff. And you know, tire was holding air, and it was amazing. But then, of course, you get out on the trail and you get a big enough hole, and you know, sealant is just gonna spray out everywhere. And so, yeah, it just seemed surprising. We didn’t figure this out, like, oh, you know, if you got a really big hole, you need to jam something in it.

Mike Bush 35:45
Yeah. I mean, those demonstrations, you use production sealant, and yeah, Stan loves to stab a tire. There’s no two questions, two ways about it. But generally, you know that sealant maybe only been installed in the tire for a couple of weeks to a month, or what have you. Relatively fresh. We had some shows and events. We would pull wheels directly off our own bikes, stab them for a weekend, put them back on and go do a ride. Wow, it was that effective. But yeah, you know, when you’re out in the environment, your tires wet and muddy, you sliced it on a piece of slit rock or something different. Things happen that aren’t as controlled as a nail and a tire, yeah? And certainly, certainly causes you to think about other ways to deal with this.

Jeff Barber 36:33
That’s a good point, because once you, like, actually get on the bike and start rolling, you know, parts of it are gonna like, stretch and they’re gonna, like, pull apart. And, I mean, I had that recently with a tire on a bike on testing where, you know, the the tire sealed up fine, held air for days and days and days, and then as soon as you get on it, that’s when it opens up one of those gaps. And, you know, it’s a big gap, and so sealants just gonna flow out of it. What? What makes the stands Dart Tool unique? That’s your new ish tire plug solution. What makes it different from the other ones that are out there?

Mike Bush 37:12
So the big thing that differentiates it from what was available in the market we brought that out, was that the material that we’re using to plug the hole isn’t the sticky rubber strip, and it’s treated with a chemical that reacts with the tire sealant and causes that coagulation we talked about earlier on to happen instantly. So you have that material again, kind of like the particles and the sealant that the crystals are doing trying to seal the bigger portion of the hole. We’re putting in a big piece of material, basically, that is impregnated with this chemical. It’s a safe stuff to use. It’s not going to hurt you, but when the sealant makes contact, the fabric absorbs some of the sealant, reacts with that chemical and causes it to clot and make a permanent seal. Our marketing guys will tell you that it’s like growing a tire in front of your eyes, sort of thing. Effectively, that is the big differentiator. Those rubber strips and so on. They’re sticky in nature. They’re meant to kind of adhere to the casings a little bit again, if it’s dirty, if it’s covered in sealant, maybe it doesn’t work every time. They don’t conform as well to the puncture. We use a very conformable material for our darts, and if those the rubbers type plugs get dusty and dirty, they tend to not be as effective. Where we encapsulate our little Dart Tool to protect the Dart itself, so they’re always clean and ready to go. And it’s that reaction, though, it really differentiates our product.

Jeff Barber 38:49
Sounds super cool. And really geeky, too. It’s not, again, it’s not just like a, like a physical, you know, I’m gonna plug this hole with with something. It’s, it’s actually a chemical reaction that’s happening.

Mike Bush 39:02
It’s like you mentioned earlier. It’s part chemical pro physical, and trying to come about it from two ways with what we think is just a better solution.

Jeff Barber 39:11
So do you have any tips or tricks for dealing with tire issues on the trail, beyond just, you know, rolling out with the right stuff to begin with?

Mike Bush 39:20
Of course, we’ll always say, you know, maintain your sealant every every couple of weeks or months, depending on your local environment and how much you drive. You want to check your sealant, whether it’s ours or another brand. No sense in using it if you’re not going to keep it refreshed and so forth.

Jeff Barber 39:34
Yeah, is there something that causes it to dry out within the tire more quickly, like, like, hot conditions, is it going to dry out more quickly, or dry air? Or is there something like that that people can kind of think about?

Mike Bush 39:50
If you store your bike and in the shed in Georgia, very humid, but it’s also very hot, things to evaporate more quickly if you’re free. Currently inflating the tires, you’re introducing new air that can react with the sealants and begin to dry them out. But really that storage condition is a big factor. The amount you would install initially, if you only add two ounces, versus four ounces? Well, of course, four ounces will last longer, right? Pretty straightforward. And how often you ride, the number of punctures that may have sealed even with Ultra knowledge, yeah, of course, you know can use up some sealant, but if you’re riding very frequent frequently, you’re constantly rotating that that puddle is continuing to coat the sidewalls and fill in imperfections and so on. Along the bead area that will use some sealant as well.

As far as tips and tricks on the trail, beyond maintenance and so on, I would say the initial reaction is always to reinflate right away.

I punctured. I heard it. It’s still leaking. I’m gonna stop. Get the sealant to it. Great. You see it do its thing. If you do reinflate right away, as you mentioned before, that casing flexes and stretches back open. It’s a little grotesque analogy, but it’s like a flesh wound kind of just spreading open again and more liquid comes through. So if you can, it’s best to ride it at that lower pressure for a little while, allowance to cure and kind of steal the puncture.

Jeff Barber 41:23
It’s best to ride it, to cure it. Or if you just sit there and let let the air. I mean is riding, riding is actually better?

Mike Bush 41:29
Yes. The other thing I would say is, if you have to inflate on the trail, you can use, obviously, a mini pump, be careful with your valves, a CO two, or the big air inflators. NSW has their non CO two inflators and so on. But if you use a CO two again, you’re introducing all that stuff that’s wanting to make that sealant coagulate. When you get back home, it’s best to deflate, check your tire for any further damage, determine if it’s sealed permanently. Maybe you want to add a dirt plug at that point and add new sealant, reinflate with just your standard floor pump or air compressor that will allow your seal to last longer.

Jeff Barber 42:10
Well, I’m gonna ask you a personal question, do you bring a tube with you when you go on a big ride? Just in case,

Mike Bush 42:17
I do. I still, you know, 20 years later, still carry a tube on most rides. If it’s if it’s over two hour ride, I’ll certainly have a tube with me. I can say I have not installed a tube on the trail. Man, this is going to go back a long ways. I still had my titanium Racer X. So we’re talking like 2008 nine was the last time I had to install tuba trail. Now, I’ve given a lot of tubes to people that should have maintained or sealant or tubeless by now, right? Yep, I do have one. Yeah.

Jeff Barber 42:52
Well, I mean, would you ever bother trying to go back tubeless on the trail? I mean, I know I have friends who do they carry around, you know, two ounces of stands. And, you know, they got CO two and, and they, they try to just mount a tire back up tubeless, once they’ve, you know, figured out why they lost air in the first place.

Mike Bush 43:14
Yeah, absolutely, they’ve done that. So, you know, on the trail bike or gravel bike, I’ll have a Dart Tool, maybe some spare darts, an inflator, whether it’s CO two or mini pump, and at least one two ounce bottle. Yeah, you can, you can set things back up on the trail, and we pride ourselves on our rim designs being very easy to inflate and and so on. So we used to do a demonstration with a mini pump at Interbike and Euro bike and so I’m just inflating tires with a mini pump to show you it. And, yeah, there’s no reason you can’t set it back up if you know what you’re doing and you have the proper supplies with you.

Jeff Barber 43:49
So is there a better way to connect tires and wheels together, assuming that the whole industry agreed to work together to possibly come up with some of those dreaded standards.

Mike Bush 44:06
Well, there, there is a lot of standards work going on. So, yeah, the International how far in the weeds you want to get here the international standard? Okay? So 5775 has been left to sit for way too long. It actually missed its normal review cycle, but that’s been underway for a couple of years now. And then you have a lot of people have probably heard of ETRTO as a European tiring room technical organization. So they have their their standard ETRTO actually is able to update on an annual basis. ISO is in these 10 year cycles. So right now we’re in the process stands as a brand, and one of our engineers myself here have been involved with the US side, which is ASTM, to try and get this, this new standard through we’ve offered a lot of measurement data, and I say some of the CT scans and so on, to try to advance these. Standard. So they’re basically trying to encompass what’s on the market already with a more standardized dimension at the beat seat and so on. It’s not being done in such way that’s going to prevent new innovations from coming along, but I would say we’re still that’s hard, to hard to guess, maybe 12 to 18 months from that standard being done and published. Of course, I don’t feel that it addresses all the problems right now. It’s a step in the right direction overall.

Jeff Barber 45:39
It sounds like some of the existing standards, and especially the new ones, aren’t necessarily barriers to innovation, or are there things that you know maybe stands would like to do, but but can’t, because there’s like, just a lack of inner compatibility is in terms of tires or wheels or Yeah, do you feel kind of stifled by any of those standards that are out there?

Mike Bush 46:08
Well, when we started doing rim designs, basically 2002 2003 we kind of ignored all the standards anyway, and started going a new direction, yeah, others, and it worked out, I would say so once the standard is actually established, it helps for a period of time, but the things evolve, whether it’s material technologies or manufacturing methods and so on, become available or scalable way that makes sense, then that standard, Sooner or later, becomes outdated. So there are some things we would like to see done that aren’t possible yet. Coming from the rim side, we’re dealing with a fairly rigid structure. I mean, there are things that account for like when you build the wheel and it compresses a bit that we’re part of the old standards. They’re being incorporated a bit into the new standard. But there are things there that could be done differently going forward, for sure. Yeah, it’d be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean, as somebody that obviously would make sealant, and that’s our thing, I’m I’m trying to think, you know what, what’s going to put us out of business in 10 years? Is sealant even necessary? Is there some new, amazing technology that obsolete sealant. Same thing with rims. Is there something that somebody out there is working on or has a brilliant idea that hasn’t come to fruition yet that just changes our opinion about how this tire and rim interface should work? We often try to borrow from automotive and motorcycles and so on, and they do some things differently. But in bicycle, we’re dealing with very, very light rims and wheels, not at all comparable to motorcycle, you know, a solid steel automotive wheel or motorcycle. We’re dealing with tires that have to be mounted by hand. We basically have the only tires that are a folding nature. It’s a different animal. So trying to apply some of the bigger equipment or automotive type thinking to bicycles doesn’t really work. Yeah, and we do see that happening from time to time.

Jeff Barber 48:20
Finally, I want to ask, are there some current problems with mountain bike wheels or tires or sealant that stands is focused on solving in the future, like what really bothers you right now, when you go out for a ride and you have to deal with your wheels or your tires?

Mike Bush 48:40
I think, much like today’s mountain bikes, you know, those of us have been at it for a little while, today’s bikes are incredible. What you can do with them. And by and large, today’s wheels are really incredible. There are there are still improvements to be made in mounting and inflating, how that seal is formed between Tire and Rim. There’s always room for improvement there. The Holy Grail of the vertical, compliant, laterally stiff. You know, we chase it with a lot of our rim models, but that’s, that’s something people are always seeming to desire. So I don’t think that goes away the pinch flatting. You know, we talked inserts and so on, so forth. A lot of that is around pinch flatting, not just tire stability. So I think there’s some things there to want to work on. I say I always think about sealant and what happen with that, and how do we introduce it to the system, or does it get eliminated from the system? And the rims will play a factor there too.

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