i and welcome to the Cyclegrades blog where we chat about all things related to cycling from exciting bike tech, cycling upgrades, and local routes in LA.
In this week's post I’m going to touch on tubeless setups and dive into my initial impressions of the Fillmore Tubeless Valves from Reserve Wheels. These are a new type of value design that was made to address some of the common issues found with presta valves in a tubeless setup.
Specifically these aim to help reduce clogs within your valve from the tubeless sealant, increase airflow so you can seat tires without using pressurized air, and allow you to easily release your tire pressure while out riding.
I’ve recently set these up on my bike and we’ll dive into why I chose these over the common presta tubeless valves and why I think these are worth picking up if you’ve had trouble with tubeless valves in the past.
Going Tubeless?
Before I dive into the Fillmore Tubeless Valves, if you’re new to tubeless or considering it as a road cyclist, I’ve recently shared my thoughts on going tubeless for road cyclists and what you’ll need to make that transition. You can find that post here.
The Basics of a Tubeless Valves
For those not familiar with a tubeless setup, when you make the switch you'll need a tubeless valve in order to inflate your tires. A tubeless value is composed of the valve and a valve core.
To add tubeless sealant the valve core to removed so that you have a larger opening to inject the sealant through.
A tubeless valve will often be provided with any tubeless ready setup but there are also many third party options out there such as those from Muc-Off and Lezyne.
Challenges of a Typical Tubeless Valve
A typical tubeless setup with presta valves can run into some problems over time. Based on my experience I ran into the following issues with my tubeless road setup.
Tubeless Valves Can Get Clogged
One of the issues with a tubeless setup is over time the sealant can start to clog up the end of the valve making it difficult to add in new sealant and even pump up your tires.
My recent road wheels got so bad over time that I ended up using my Orange Seal dipstick as a makeshift spike that I would push through the valve in an attempt to make the air path larger so I could add in sealant. Without this my sealant would spill out of the valve and onto my tire.
As you can probably guess this also made inflating my tires much more difficult as well since only a small amount of air was reaching the tire with each push of my pump.
Later on when I finally took it all apart I saw how bad it had gotten, as the sealant had built up around the valve and formed a large clot.
Sealant can get into the Valve Core
Another challenge with tubeless I found is the valve core itself would also start to get coated with tubeless sealant. This made unscrewing the valve more difficult and a challenge to pump air though. As a result I now keep a bag of extra valves cores at home for when this happens.
I will admit this is not solely the fault of tubeless valves and valve cores as I probably should have been cleaning out my tires, valves, and wheels more frequently. Regardless this was frustrating and something I thought I’d just accept as the reality of using a tubeless setup.
Exploring Options
When it was time to replace my road tires I started to look at what other options were out there that would help with these issues.
In my search I came across many tubeless valves but as they all used presta valves I didn't expect they would be too different from what I have been using. However it was at this point I came across the Fillmore Tubeless Valves.
Fillmore Tubeless Valves
These valves from the creators of Reserve Wheels on paper should address many of my frustrations above. In fact they listed the following benefits:
- Greater airflow, making it easier to mount tires
- No clogging due to the redesign of the valve
- A coreless design so no sticky valve cores that need to be replaced
- An easy way to adjust tire pressure on the go without having to take off the valve cap
This all sounded great but the big downside was the price at $60 for a pair for the 70mm option was two times the price of the Muc-Off and three times the price of the Lezyne valves.
Considering the frustrations I had above and that after cleaning out that clog and other mess my existing valves were useless, I decided to pick these up and see if they were worth it.
First Impressions
I’ve only been using them for about 2 months but these are my initial impressions against the benefits they highlighted.
Greater Airflow
When mounting my tires I was able to seat them to the rim just by pumping them up without the use of compressed air. So this for me worked as advertised. I would like to see what others have experienced as I also know a lot of this can be due to the tire and rim combination.
No Clogging
So far inflating my tires with this valve has been problem free. I have yet to see any stickiness when pressing down on the valve to add air in. So this has been great so far.
Micro-Adjust
What this means is you can unscrew the valve cap a little bit and press down on the cap to let out some air. This is much faster than with a presta valve setup where you would need to remove the valve cap, unscrew the valve core, press on the valve to let some air out, and then screw everything back together.
This also has worked nicely but something I don’t really use for road cycling, however I can see this being very helpful for gravel and mountain biking.
Direct-Inject
This is the one area I have not tested yet, but I will update this post once I do.
I didn’t get to test this yet because I went with sealant from Silca which for the initial setup recommends adding the sealant directly to the tire instead of through the valve. When I need to do my first top up, I’ll report back as I’ll use their replenisher which can be added through the valve.
Final Thoughts:
So far I’ve been happy with these valves and they have been easy to use and setup.
I would recommend them if you experienced any of the issues I spoke about above or just want to help avoid these things from happening. I will admit the cost is high but the time saved dealing with clogs and replacing valve cores is worth it to me if it continues to work as it has been.
Thanks for coming by to hear my thoughts on these new valves. Let me know if you’ve picked these up or if you have them already as I’d love to hear if you’ve had the same experience so far.
Extra
Below is a great overview from Reserve Wheels on their New Valves.
