I have (or had) foss tubes with Quasi Moto tires. I say "or had" because the rear one is now, due to user error, in the trash. I used the cloth (velox?) rim strips that I already had on the wheels, and had no problems related to that.
The other weekend I picked up several goat heads on the Las Trampas to Mt. Diablo regional trail. I pulled and patched some on the rear at the Macedo Ranch staging area. But I did not locate all the offenders and still had a slow leak. I was stoping and pumping on the way back and broke the valve stem (user error). The front was on a slow leak too. When I got home and went over things I put patches on the front foss tube and it now holds fine. I pulled several thorn remnants from my tires and patched a hole one had put in the spare I put in the rear after I broke the valve stem. I am not sure how many patches I put on each foss tube, but between the two I used up 5 of the 6 patches in one packet. I did a casual leak down test on the front before pulling the thorns and patching it. It took about 50min to drop from about 50 to 30psi, 20min more to reach ~25psi and another 28min to fall to ~17psi. My gauge is suspect (hand gauge and floor pump gauge don't agree), I only took 4 measurements, and the data doesn't have a consistent trend. This might indicate roughly 20psi per hour pressure loss with 2 or 3 goat heads in the tube. Because of flexing the leak rate might be worse when riding. My current take is that a foss tube with goat heads leaks slower than a normal tube but it does still leak at a significant rate. The more thorns the more leaking. Will you make it where you are going without patching or changing the tube? Well that depends on how many thorns, how far you are going, how hard you inflate it after noticing the leak, how low a pressure you can tolerate, and how often you will stop and add air. On the pro side: I like the long smooth stems, and I believe they leak slower than normal tubes when thorns are in em. I don't have good A/B pressure v.s. time data for foss/normal tubes with goatheds in em, and I doubt I will do such a test, but I think that is what you would need to make an informed decision. On the con side: $20 each is a bit dear, and the patches are not cheep either. How much the benefits are worth to you is a personal decision, and reasonable folks may come to varied conclusions. I suspect the reliable counter to goatheads is to ride the "gufaw at goatheads stout" Schwalbe fatties. That or don't ride where there are goatheads. > > >> On Mar 18, 2012, at 9:28 AM, Forrest wrote: > > >> What's the verdict on the Foss inner tubes? And do you really have to use > >> their special rim tape, or will these tubes work with standard kinds of rim > >> tape just as well? Thanks! > > >> -- > >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > >> "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > >> To view this discussion on the web visit > >>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/yKy-wl3nWnYJ. > >> To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. > >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > >> rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > >> For more options, visit this group at > >>http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
