Tyre sealant always brings an interesting debate among cyclists; some love it, some not so much. In my mind, if it helps to overcome punctures, it is a welcome addition to any tyre on a training or commuting bike, where a bit of weight addition is no bad thing.
In addition, for mountain bikers, tubeless tyres are making a real impact. I run tubeless on my Whippet and it is such a great set-up; eliminating pinch flats, and pretty much eliminating normal punctures too. One of the keys to a good tubeless set-up is the sealant.
OKO know a thing or two about tyre sealant; in fact they were the inventors of tyre sealant way back in 1978. In the last couple of years they have made a push into the bicycle segment and with some great new products. Most people that run sealant in their tyres have heard of Stan's or Slime; OKO has advantages over both of these that I discuss below. I've had the OKO Puncture-Free and X-treme Sealants on test on all four of my bikes over the last month, they're performing well...
OKO sealant can be applied to almost any tyre set-up; it comes in a variety of bottle sizes, these can be used to dispense sealant directly into tubeless systems. It also comes in pre-filled inner tubes for mountain bike sizes; additionally there's a patented syringe that you can purchase that screws onto the valve so you can apply the sealant to any Schrader or screw-out Presta valve tube (which is how I applied the sealant into my road bike tubes).
Puncture-Free is designed to be an all purpose sealant; cheaper than Slime and just as effective. I've been using Puncture-Free in both the pre-filled tubes on my commuter bike and on my training road bike wheel-sets through the use of the syringe injector. To ensure that I gave it a good test I put an old worn out set of tyres on one wheelset, tyres that I would be bound to get a puncture with. I didn't. Enough said.
The X-treme Sealant is designed for cross-country and downhill mountain biking; applied to tubed set-ups it is designed to be especially resilient to snake-bite slit punctures, which is an impressive claim for a sealant. I must admit that I haven't tested this context of the sealant as my mountain bike runs a tubeless system. However, in the tubeless system it is highly effective (no punctures at all despite running over glass and many many thorns).
The X-treme Sealant (along with Puncture-Free) have the great virtue that unlike latex based sealants (such as Stan's), they are not latex based but rather water soluble. The result is that firstly they are a lot cleaner and easier to wash out of a tyre, they also don't damage your rims. More importantly in my mind though, they don't dry out! That means no more latex balls inside your tubeless system; the sealant really is a fit-and-forget solution. Admittedly after a month of testing I cannot fully confirm this non-solidifying quality, but certainly this sealant is a lot more pleasant to handle than latex ones, and it is clear that it is a water-soluble solution.
People may complain that sealant adds weight, and affects the feel of the bike; that may be the case in some scenarios, but on a training bike, commuting bike or even a race bike sealant has many virtues. A puncture can ruin a ride, a commute, and can certainly ruin a race; the OKO sealant works effectively at eliminating punctures in all the formats that I have used it throughout the test period. You can't ask for much better than that.
OKO sealant is available from select distributors, which can be found at OKO.com
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