Gear, Orange Seal Cycling, Sealant, Tubeless - June 5, 2014

First Look: Orange Seal tire sealant system

Orange Seal’s tubeless kits supply everything you need to set-up tubeless wheels—sealant, rim tape, removable valve cores, alcohol wipes, and even a valve stem tool that doubles as a bottle opener.

Boasting the ability to seal tire cuts as large as three-quarters of an inch, Texas-based Orange Seal has set their sights high not only in terms of product performance, but in challenging the established leader in the category. And while it seems like a tall order, those prospects don’t appear to frighten company founder John Vargus who thinks his company has built a better mousetrap…err airtrap.

With full tubeless kits for everything from skinny road wheels on up to ginormous fatbike tires, Vargus says Orange Seal is designed to be both higher-performing and more versatile than prior such offerings on the market. They even offer their special Subzero Sealant for cold weather riding.

In addition to fixing larger cuts, Orange Seal promises better coating and adhesion to seal sidewall slices as well as the porosity of the tire. They also claim the ability to seal imperfections between the tire and wheel bead, and say their seals will last as a permanent fix for the life of the tire. The sealant was also designed to work at pressures as high as 120 psi for road applications, and was formulated to be both eco-friendly and anti-corrosive to aluminum, which is an issue with certain rim/sealant combinations.

Clean, easy set-up

One persistent complaint about using sealant is complicated and messy set-up routines that require measuring cups or special injectors. Any way you slice it, initial set-up has some complexity, but Orange Seal attempts to remove some of the anguish by including all the necessary components in its easy-to-use kits.

The Orange Seal bottle includes a tube for injecting sealant directly into the valve or tire. The system is simple to use and less likely to create a mess than other systems.

By making the product bottle double as a sealant injector, the likelihood of spills because of pouring and measuring is greatly reduced. When used in conjunction with removable-core valve stems, both the initial fill and subsequent sealant top-offs are a snap.

The Orange Seal bottle includes a Twist-Lock Injector—a mess-free of getting sealant directly into the tire.

Airing-up

Getting tubeless tires to seat for the first time can be an exercise in frustration. Even with the use of a compressor it can be difficult to get tire beads properly snapped into the hook. On the first wheels we set up—a pair of Easton Haven Carbons with new Specialized Ground Control Grid 2Bless-ready tires—we were able to air-up using only a floor pump. To do so, we removed the valve cores to allow maximum airflow, then pumped until beads snapped into the hook.

With the valve cores removed, air can flow into the tire faster making seating easier.

Our mounting ease was likely more a matter of the specific tire and rim combination than the sealant—the Haven’s are natively tubeless without even a rim strip, and the Grid-version Specialized tires are thick and supple—but we’ll be trying a number of combinations in future set-ups.

Initial performance

In the world of tubeless sealant, no news is good news, which is to say we haven’t had any failures in the month we’ve been riding our Orange Sealed wheels. During that time, we’ve racked-up a fair amount of ride time including two trips to Moab, Utah—a place not known for its kindness to tires and wheels.

Last week we unmounted our tires to check the sealant condition and found a nice, wet coating of Orange Seal on the inside of the casing along with a small pool of the stuff at tire’s lowest point. When we unseated the tire, we pulled off a couple stringy strands of dried sealant along the bead hook.

The particulate matter that serves as a clotting agent is less obvious than that used in Stan’s NoTubes, but we presume it to be still suspended within the liquid. No crusty accumulations or “Stanimals” were present in either tire.

It was hard to tell if the sealant had actually plugged any leaks, or whether we’d just been lucky enough not to have any punctures, but we’ve been flat-free for the duration. Truth-to-tell, flats are a relative rarity when running tubeless on our home trails, but we more-or-less expect some in Moab.

In any case, we remounted the tires and added another ounce of sealant per Orange Seal’s recommendation and re-aired the tires without a hitch.

Torture testing and company Q & A

While we will continue to monitor and report on our Orange Seal-equipped wheels’ performance in the real world, we’re also going to conduct some staged torture testing over the few weeks that we’ll video record and present here. We’ll also perform the same tests with the Kleenex of tire sealants—Stan’s—to see if we can find any differences in performance.

The company’s founders will also entertain a question-and-answer session on all things tubeless, so if you’ve got any burning questions about Orange Seal or tubeless in general, comment below and we’ll run it by them.