At cycling distributor Madison’s recent trade & press event, I was introduced to the new Finish Line Tubeless Sealant, a product they suggest will change the tubeless tyre marketplace … and they might be right too as they introduce the technology behind bulletproof body armour to puncture protection.
For a lubricants company like Finish Line, a tubeless sealant does seem like an obvious product to have in their range. They told me that when they first investigated it, they could have pursued the “traditional” approach and looked at a latex based solution. Instead though they turned to long time technical partner DuPont to see what other ideas they could explore. DuPont suggested using Kevlar for the product and over a period of a year or so, they’ve created the Finish Line Tubeless Sealant.
This new sealant relies on Kevlar fibres to seal any puncture and in the demonstrations I saw appears to do this impressively well. However the most exciting part of this new Kevlar based sealant formula is that it doesn’t dry out like latex based solutions do. So when you set your tyres up with this new sealant, you do it once and the sealant lasts the full life of the tyre. This means no topping up is required. Fit and forget – unless you have punctures that leak a quantity of the sealant.
On the stand they were punching holes in a road tyre and it was only leaking about as much air as removing your track pump does when you’ve pumped up your tyre. A chirp of air and about a 5 psi discharge. They were also punching holes of up to a quarter of an inch into tyres and they were sealing fast.
Punctures are sealed by the Kevlar fibres blocking the hole, so like most other sealants, they need to have contact with area with the hole.
Tubeless has in my experience been some what troublesome and certainly has some hassle to get it set up. To have a new sealant that removes the hassle of topping up the sealant every few months is very appealing.
If you’d like to have a simpler tubeless tyre experience with a product that lasts as long as your tyre does, the new Finish Line Sealant looks well worth a try. It’s out now.
Learn more at Finish Line: http://www.finishlineusa.com/products/tubeless-tire-sealant/sealant
