(Rant warning) Rene Herse tires poorly designed for tubeless?

[Jan Heine]

Originally Posted by KonaSS

Wholeheartedly disagree for tires above 32 width. Non-tubeless is a non-starter.

Many of us have been riding on gravel since the 1990s, long before tubeless was even a thing. And when tubeless came onto the scene, many of us were curious about it and ran our tires tubeless, long before there were tires and rims that were tubeless-compatible. We remember burping tires and all kinds of issues as the technology matured.

We've come a long way, and whether tubeless or tubes are better really depends. On a mountain bike in technical terrain, I'd absolutely run tubeless. But I'd also run mountain bike tires with stiffer sidewalls, at low pressures. On a gravel bike, pinch flats are much less of an issue if you run really wide tires, unless you're racing and can't see where you're going in a peloton. But racers usually run high-end wheels that have good tire fit.

We ride pretty hard, and the gravel in the Cascade Mountains is anything but smooth. We usually run tubes in our 42s and 55s. In 20 years and 10,000 of miles on gravel, I've pinch-flatted maybe 6 times. The last time, I thought that tubeless would have helped. Then I discovered that the rim had cracked from the impact... I run tubeless when the terrain is really rough and the speeds are really high. It's not even the setup that bothers me – once you know how, it's not that hard, even with the Extralight tires that I usually run – but I'm not a fan of the need to replenish the sealant and keep track. With tubes, I can take a bike I haven't ridden in months, pump up the tires (if needed) and go, knowing that there won't be problems.

At Rene Herse, we understand that riders' preferences, riding styles and conditions vary a lot. That is why almost all our tires >32 mm are tubeless compatible. Run them with tubes if you like, or tubeless if you prefer.

Jan Heine
Rene Herse Cycles

[benb]

It's ridiculous that tire & wheel manufacturers can't get their story straight and agree on exactly what the diameters & widths actually should be.

I wonder how much of these problems is because most of the bike companies we actually buy stuff from don't actually make anything anymore. It's not like the bike industry only suffers from this problem with tire/rim diameters. It's rampant across all kinds of bike components. I really wonder if the problem is that they're marketing companies first and foremost that borrow some money to get started and put in an order with an overseas supplier. They didn't develop the product the same way as if they actually had to ramp up and manufacture products themselves. So if they're not made of money and suddenly they get a batch of 10,000 of whatever the bike product is that they hyped up and it's not quite right it's going to be really painful to toss the bad product.. the manufacturer is not going to help cause they can prove they built exactly what was ordered and they have tons of other customers and can afford to lose one. It's the same hollowing out of business as so many other industries where corporate can't understand they're outsourcing the entire value of the company away until they can't build their product themselves anymore, meanwhile smoke and mirrors makes them think the advertising/branding/marketing is the important thing.

I will say one thing.. I have had this problem with another tire manufacturer, so it's not like RH is unique here. Those tires had problems even with tubes. Same story about rims & tires not really being standardized.

It's just some dimensions.. they need to have some kind of meeting/conference and just decide on it.

Try to build something actually complicated and there are 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 things like this that have to be agreed on. Other industries do it constantly and get it right.

[Clean39T]

Originally Posted by Jan Heine

I'm not a fan of the need to replenish the sealant and keep track. With tubes, I can take a bike I haven't ridden in months, pump up the tires (if needed) and go, knowing that there won't be problems.

Jan Heine
Rene Herse Cycles

Exactly. Thanks for the honest and insightful replies to what were some mildly-offensive posts here..

[spoonrobot]

Originally Posted by benb

It's ridiculous that tire & wheel manufacturers can't get their story straight and agree on exactly what the diameters & widths actually should be.

You should read this, it will probably give you a chuckle while a the same time make you want to bang your head into the wall a few times. TL;DR - Stans is mostly to blame.

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/site...an%20Nicol.pdf

[benb]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

You should read this, it will probably give you a chuckle while a the same time make you want to bang your head into the wall a few times. TL;DR - Stans is mostly to blame.

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/site...an%20Nicol.pdf

Well this kind of stuff is why I say screw it and restrict my Trek that has a carbon fork to only running a Bontrager stem.

Definitely no performance benefit of some other brand of stem that can counteract the safety issues around the bike industry being unable to agree on safety standards around the interaction of a stem + carbon fiber steerer.

With tires it doesn't even seem like anyone can even really say which combinations are guaranteed to be safe.

Also all this rim tape nonsense could have been avoided with better rim designs. UST is ancient and solved all these issues. It's easy to forget the whole Stan's nonsense grew out of riders trying to hack tubeless into tires and rims that were never intended for it...

[.RJ]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

You should read this, it will probably give you a chuckle while a the same time make you want to bang your head into the wall a few times. TL;DR - Stans is mostly to blame.

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/site...an%20Nicol.pdf

If a small company can crater the discussion, perhaps thats part of the problem? Their stuff has always been an outlier, both for good (can get just about anything that isnt a road tire mounted tubeless on a stan's rim) and bad.

[benb]

Well this goes back to no one having the ability to say no to a company like Stan's.. they've got almost no regulatory stick to punish a company that goes off the rails. Try doing this with car or motorcycle rims & tires and the company would have been toast a long time ago.

And if they blackball Stan's out of the industry for screwing with all the standards and creating potential safety issues what does that mean for Trek or Specialized the next time they want to go off the rails and create a new Bottom Bracket or Brake mounting "standard".

Most of this stuff is not as safety critical as tire/rim interaction but it's all really annoying because they're creating all these issues hoping for some 0.001% performance increase that they can market as if it was a 10% performance increase.

New road bikes are nice but I wouldn't really feel like I was suffering much at all if I had to ride only bikes that were out in 2000 and I was stuck with a threaded headset, 1" metal steerer, rim brakes, 9-speed, etc.. MTB is different though.

If I had to be honest the things that would suck to give up the most would be power meters & fancy GPS cyclocomputers. And those are very peripheral.

[.RJ]

Originally Posted by benb

And if they blackball Stan's out of the industry for screwing with all the standards and creating potential safety issues what does that mean for Trek or Specialized the next time they want to go off the rails and create a new Bottom Bracket or Brake mounting "standard".

There's no impact on the other stuff, as long as the manufacturer provides parts and places like wheels mfg, problem solvers, paragon, etc will pretty quickly reverse engineer these things and make parts available because its profitable for them.

I cant imagine why the bigger OEMs dont tell Stans they can either participate or just go away and do what they want, there are plenty of other options available - I think stans losing their place as stock equipment on big brands is far worse for stans than say, specialized.

Does stans even make road/gravel rims anymore?

[HTupolev]

Originally Posted by denapista

Tell me more... 26in tubes will work in 27.5 wheels? I'm guessing YES due to Latex stretching abilities..

Tubes are pretty stretchy in general. Butyl too, not just latex.

650b is about 4.5% larger than 26er. That's a big enough discrepancy that you'll probably notice that the tube designed for a smaller wheel when installing it, but a small enough discrepancy that it can work fine.

[Davist]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

You should read this, it will probably give you a chuckle while a the same time make you want to bang your head into the wall a few times. TL;DR - Stans is mostly to blame.

]

thanks, interesting. From the challenge tire guy, they certainly have had their ups and downs. Surprising to see the tire companies are bigger than Shimano, though I was thinking only bikes (Continental for example). Slight error that bike tires take the highest pressure, trucks (100+ psi) and airplanes (~200 psi) routinely have higher pressures. (and tubeless and hookless and most importantly well defined standards...)

[ColonelJLloyd]

Originally Posted by .RJ

Does stans even make road/gravel rims anymore?

I don't really see a distinction. The Crest Mk3 is 23mm internal. I'm using a 650b set and have built two 700c sets for friends for use with 38mm slicks.

[wyatt_]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

You should read this, it will probably give you a chuckle while a the same time make you want to bang your head into the wall a few times. TL;DR - Stans is mostly to blame.

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/site...an%20Nicol.pdf

Some great inside baseball here, though maybe a slightly biased take?

[benb]

Originally Posted by ColonelJLloyd

I don't really see a distinction. The Crest Mk3 is 23mm internal. I'm using a 650b set and have built two 700c sets for friends for use with 38mm slicks.

If you look at that article you'll see that them claiming 23mm internal might not be enough.

It's whether it also meets the correct +/- tolerances to be OK with the tire you choose.

We all act like 650b and 700c actually mean all those rims are the same diameter, or 23mm actually means all the 23mm rims are actually 23mm wide internally.

Stans can have all their rims be absolutely within their spec and they're dangerous with some tires cause the +/- they chose on some dimension are not the same.

Maybe Tubulars are not so bad after all.

[truth]

Originally Posted by Jan Heine

As others have noted, the same tires work great on some rims, and are a terribly loose fit on others. That indicates it's not the tires, but the rims, that are the issue.

Hi, Jan. Thanks for this and your other measured responses here. I'm a fan of the products you sell and of your periodical.

I do want to take issue with the logic you've expressed here and ask that you consider a different explanation.

Many people have noted here and elsewhere that for a given rim, other manufacturer's tires work fine and Rene Herse are a loose fit. That indicates it is not the rims, but the tires, that are at issue.

[dem]

Originally Posted by truth

Hi, Jan. Thanks for this and your other measured responses here. I'm a fan of the products you sell and of your periodical.

I do want to take issue with the logic you've expressed here and ask that you consider a different explanation.

Many people have noted here and elsewhere that for a given rim, other manufacturer's tires work fine and Rene Herse are a loose fit. That indicates it is not the rims, but the tires, that are at issue.

I try to only post once on threads like this, because it just ends up sounding like I have an axe to grind (when I don't - I don't know Jan and I am not in the biz.) But I've used at least 6 different brand/model of tubeless tires in 35-38 width, none of them had the issues of the BJP (especially the bead getting looser with mounting/remounting and then blowing off the rim.)

Just because someone posts on the forum doesn't make their products not problematic - although I do appreciate the participation. Perhaps earlier generations of these tires were bad, and newer versions are better - I don't know, there is no way to tell.