Easy Gets Easier: Schwalbe Tubeless Tire Booster
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Schwalbe took its sweet time jumping into the tubeless arena, but when it did – with a line that includes the Pro One – it was sweet. All the benefits of a great Schwalbe tire and tubeless in the easiest to mount tubeless road tire on the planet. Now Schwalbe plans to make the process even easier with a new seating device called the Tire Booster.
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Mounting and seating tubeless tires has broken many a tire lever and mechanic. The name of the game is massive air volume to quickly inflate the tire and get the bead to seat in the rim hook with a confidence inspiring ‘snap’. Plenty of solutions have been offered for the home mechanic trying to seat a bead without a compressor, like new pumps with attached pressure chambers – Lezyne’s Overdrive and Bontrager’s Flash Charger – or the poor man’s compressor – CO2 cartridges.
Schawlbe has now entered the game with the Schawlbe tubeless Tire Booster, developed with a British company called Airshot. This operates the same way a pump with an attached pressure chamber does, but keeps the chamber separate in case you just dropped a few hundred on a new Silca. Use your existing floor pump to charge the Tire Booster with pressurized air then connect the hose to your tire valve. Flip the quick release valve and up to 11bar/160psi can instantly be shot into your tire inflating it so rapidly it will quickly seat in the rim hooks with that audible ‘snap’. For big volume tires a special adapter can be used to remove the valve and increase the volume of air moving into the tire.
At 435grams it’s an easy item to toss in the car when you’re heading to your local ‘cross race or gravel event. Schwalbe has been testing the unit extensively on the Enduro World Series. While we have not used it on road tires, we saw Schwalbe personnel using an early prototype at the Pro One tire launch last summer and it worked each and every time.
Look for the Tire Booster to hit the market this December. US pricing TBD, but in Europe it will be €60.
More: schwalbe.com