If you haven’t already moved to tubeless tyres on your mountain bike, why not?
If, however, you’re a staunch butyl-tubed holdout and are struggling with punctures and pinch flats, you may be interested in Tannus’s Armour system — a foam insert for tubed off-road wheel setups.
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There’s a veritable panoply of foam inserts available nowadays, all designed to provide impact protection for rims and tyre sidewalls when running tyres at low pressures. However, most of these are designed for tubeless setups, but Tannus's Armour foam protector is designed to work with conventional inner tubes instead.
The concept is not completely new though. The Spin Shield tyre insert we reported on earlier this year is also designed to be used with tubes.
The Tannus system claims to allow you to run tyres at the lower pressures required for improving grip and performance while saving you the claimed hassle of setting up tubeless tyres properly.
We do feel that modern tyres, rim designs and tubeless inflators have made setting up tubeless largely painless in the vast majority of cases though.
Unique to the Tannus design is the location of the foam, providing physical penetration protection between tube and tyre. This is also claimed to provide increased pinch flat protection and the ability to continue riding your bike if you do manage to flat.
The foam used here is based on the same Aither material as Tannus’s airless tyres, but the company claims to have optimised the properties for this application with a lighter weight and better rebound and shock absorption characteristics.
The insert is aimed at larger volume road and mountain bike tyres. It is claimed to weigh 250g for the 700x35-40c version, 270g for the 27.5in version and 290g for the 29in version.
That does make it lighter than some competitors (in the tubeless category), but you will also have to consider the additional weight of a tube.
The Armour insert will be priced at €29.99 with an anticipated spring 2019 launch.
For more details visit Tannus.