Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Do Sealants Work In Cold Temperatures?

As the news is dominated by reports of record low temperatures on the East Coast, this seems to be an timely  question; at what point does your sealant freeze and cease to be effective?   To test this, placed a bottle of Stan's sealant into my freezer, which is set to 2 degrees F.   The next day, it was a bit sluggish, but not frozen solid.    My guess is that it's effectiveness would be reduced at this temperature, but entirely gone.

Fortunately, I am not in the habit of cycling at those temperatures, hence the freezer test.   I am confident my sealant will continue to work in the 10-20 degree area  that represents the limits of my personal operating range.

I know that some people, god bless them, regularly go riding in sub-zero temperatures.   The last thing they want on such a ride is a flat.   One interesting thought I had was to dilute the sealant with some alcohol to lower it's freezing point.    Vodka and Stan's anyone?    Heck, the Slime people purposely made their Slime Pro smell like a Pina Colada!  Seriously, I would probably use over the counter rubbing alcohol as it is more concentrated, less expensive, and can be purchased without ID.

I have not yet tried other sealants such as Slime and CaffeLatex in my tires, much less at extreme cold temperatures.   Does anybody out there want to chime in with their experiences with different sealants at different temperatures?

1 comment:

  1. Heya - great blog!

    Been riding tubeless offroad, and in the winter here where it gets close to freezing, it still works, although maybe a bit slower.

    Will be interesting to see how it works on the road.. I used 2oz, and that seems like a fair bit for such a small tire, so that might compensate?

    Also, i did my own review of the Stan's/Hutchinson combination if you're interested:

    http://oakbaybikes.com/review-hutchinson-fusion-3-tubeless-road-tire/

    ReplyDelete