On 1/11/2019 11:11 PM, wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing riders?

To help with the arduous task of parting fools and their money.

After pondering this a few days, I would not be surprised of
bicycle-tubeless retreated back to being an MTB-only thing,,, and a
*limited* MTB thing at that. -And of the demise of road-tubeless. In
maybe 20 years or so.

The one clear advantage of bicycle tubeless is in cases of MTB use where
there are a lot of un-avoidable things regularly puncturing tires--such
as desert-climate riding (with lots of cacti), or anywhere dry enough to
suffer goat-heads. This is the one instance that I've seen a lot of
people online say that the mess of tubeless is worth it.

In SOME tests,,, tubeless tires have shown slightly less rolling
resistance than regular tires using butyl inner tubes--but then again,
the difference was not that great and steel-belted tires have already
been shown to have drastically less rolling resistance than regular
tires, even when using butyl inner tubes. So tubeless, bias-ply
un-belted tires aren't going to win the rolling resistance contest.

Tubeless tires don't have the issue of pinch flats when used at lower
pressures on MTBs, but then again, a -radial- casing tire would have
much better ground compliance than a bias-ply tire does, even at a
higher inflation pressures. It's just that tire companies are loathe to
make radial tires for bicycles, due to the limited past experience.

I said before in another post that I didn't think that bicycle-tubeless
would become truly widespread (entering into the Wal-Mart bicycle realm)
until 1) it was standardized to one bead type, and 2) there was a way to
do it without the internal tire sealant, because dealing with the
internal sealant is the messiest part. I now see that time being a very
long way off, if I get to see it at all. And even so, dealing with a
tubeless flat would require considerable cleanliness to take the tire
off and apply an internal patch.

I think that most people don't get flat tires enough that they would see
the messy sealant as worth putting up with. And really, most non-bicycle
vehicles that use tubeless tires,,,, also don't bother with internal
sealant. -The *concept* of internal tire sealant was invented over 100
years ago, by the by. It's certainly had time to catch on with
motorists, and for some reason, isn't found to be that beneficial.