Vredestein Race Latex Road Tube

At under 55gms and as supple as the post ride was these tubes are awesome and should be OEM in all high end clinchers sold on LBS built bikes I Own Dura Ace c24 carbon clinchers and the riding difference In my opinion was rather astonishing after I changed out the Butyl for the latex tubes but the best thing about latex tubes is they patch permanently latex glue and a latex patch form a hermetically tight bond compared to Butyl which the bond is rather weak since there is no latex substrate to form a good base bond

When I ordered my new, light wheelset - I threw on these and some 150g tires just to go the whole nine yards wrt weight. I like these better than the Vittoria Latex tubes I put in the same wheel a couple weeks later. I've removed both after only a few hundred miles, and the Vredestein's look like they've fared much better. The Vittorias kind of look haggard and make one wonder if you want to reinstall them or not. If you want to try latex, I think the Vreds are the way to go. They do lose about 15-20 psi over night when you first install them. I certainly wouldn't bet any body parts that I could tell the difference in a blind test - either in weight or feelrolling resistancewhatever. I threw them in a bag of talk first and did not use irons to install. I did use a bead jack. No problems o the install if you do it correctly and make sure you go around the tire getting everything seated right before inflating. I wish they came in a shorter valve stem. This, the cost, the air loss, the availability, the ridicule - all have brought me back to light butyl at 80ish grams. (I sometime run FOSS plastic tubes.) But if you want to try latex - VREDESTEIN RULES!

Only have a few hundred miles on them so far, so I haven't completely formed an opinion yet.

A few observations

Don't use a tire iron to mount tire. I learned this at the expense of a tube.

They lose a significant amount of air pressure in between rides. You will have to pump up before each ride.

These tubes are great. I've noticed that I climb faster and accelerate better. Ride them in everyday rides without any problems. Only flaws If noticed (minor) are that you need to air up prior to each ride and over time the fuse point of stem and tube fails. Though I think this wouldn't happen if tube was threaded, something I refuse to buy. Perfect world only base of stem would be threaded!

Lightweight tube. Significantly decreases rotational weight.

This tire is 50-60 grams lighter than a typical butyl tire which is supposed to shave of precious seconds in a race. It rides great and I don't have any prOblems with the tire. It definitely doesn't hold air as long as a butyl tire though. I normally inflate to 125psi and after a 40k ride it is generally down a bit, maybe 10 psi lower at most but not too bad. The next day the tire is way down around 60-70 psi so you have to inflate before every ride. That's a good habit to be in anyway.