BIKE TUBES-YES, BIKE TUBES HAVE ENTERED THE CHAT

RAISE A HAND FOR THE HUMBLE UPGRADE THAT WILL TRANSFORM EVERY RIDE.

- BY DAN CHABANOV

For decades, tire developers considered only how a tire spun across smooth surfaces to determine its optimal pressure. With better understanding of how wheels roll over rough roads, that calculus is changing.

Walk into a typical bike shop and ask which upgrade will boost the performance of your bike, and an employee likely will suggest a new wheel-set. Lighter wheels will definitely liven up your ride, but they are not cheap. If you've entered a really good shop, an employee could suggest replacing the heavy tires with something lighter and more supple—a more economical option.

The “best bang for your buck” answer, though, is to upgrade your inner tubes. New wheels might set you back $1,000 or more. A set of good tires can easily cost $200 now. But a high-end pair of inner tubes runs about $40 to $50 and can deliver as much of a performance gain as those premium tires.

I’m not talking about the thick, heavy butyl tubes we’re all familiar with. The biggest benefits come from tubes made from latex and—more recently—thermoplastic polyurethane (or TPU). The ultralight and highly packable TPU tubes are the latest innovation in tire-inflation technology; they offer close to the same rolling resistance performance as latex tubes but at roughly half the weight. They’re so good in some cases that I’m running tubes—and not tubeless—in most of my road wheels. That’s a pretty seismic change for me and other cyclists I know.

Since the advent of road tubeless tires and their widespread adoption in professional road racing several years ago, they have been the primary option for racing tire setups—they had lower rolling resistance than tires with butyl tubes and offered greater puncture resistance.