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Tubeless tire valves are getting weird. Here are the pros and cons to each design.
(www.singletracks.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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From your username, I can see that you're a person of taste. :)
Have never been a fan of tubeless - dealing with flats is way less of a field-servicable thing. Sure, if one has a flat on a big ADV bike, dealing with a flat is going to suck either way, but, tube-type tires give a chance of restoring nearly full functionality with minimal and/or improvised tools. Something like a 250cc or smaller bike generally won't be a problem.
(Yes, I know this is more about bicycles than motorcycles but, I know the later much better.)
And yeah. Unless one is racing (either type of bike) valve stems are going to make absolutely no difference.
Running some manner of sealant is way easier if you have tubes. This is true for motorcycles and bicycles. On a roadgoing only bike there's something to be said for just being able to stab a plug into your tire if you pick up a nail in your travels, but for anything going off road I'd much rather just use a tube. You can run lower pressures if that's appropriate and you actually don't have to worry about your tire bead at all if you have a wheel with rim locks.
And you're correct, sticking a self-vulcanizing patch on a tube is a permanent repair. You can keep running that tube afterwards right up to the end of its normal service life, i.e. when you would have replaced the tire itself anyway, and this is also true for bicycles. You could run a tube completely made out of patches if you wanted to, no problem. Conversely, people will insist at you that a plug isn't permanent. I don't know of anyone trying to plug a bicycle tire, but considering I can usually just bust a mountain bike tire both off the bead and off of its rim with my bare hands I don't consider having to patch a tube on the side of an MTB trail a particularly onerous proposition. I have no idea why anybody would go out of their way to run tubeless tires on a bicycle but apparently they do... for some reason.