Orange Seal Tubeless Products: Quick Review

Orange Seal Tubeless Products: Quick Review – by Guitar Ted

Tubeless tire accessories like tape and sealants were generally the realm of a single popular brand ten years ago or so, but since then choices have blossomed. One of those choices is a brand known as Orange Seal, noted for their orange-ish colored sealant. They have other accessories to help you go the tubeless route though. We were recently sent a package containing a few items to try out on our tubeless set ups. Here is a quick overview of them and some ‘good vs not so good’ points on each.

What It Is: Orange Seal is a sealant company, obviously, but now they have their own tape and tubeless valve kits as well. We received a couple bottles of the Endurance Sealant, a VersaValve Kit in the 48mm length, and a roll of their 24mm Rim Tape.

VersaValve: These aluminum valve stems come in 32, 48, 60, and 80mm lengths in pairs with a couple of different rubber ‘grommets’ to tailor the seal to your specific rim application. There are four valve cores, and you get to choose from red, green, orange, pink, black, or teal anodized aluminum Presta valve nuts. MSRP $23.99 per kit.

Endurance Sealant: Besides the ability to seal up to 1/4″ punctures quickly, Endurance Sealant is formulated to last longer so replenishment cycles are longer. Orange Seal says the Endurance Sealant works in a wide range of temperatures, altitudes, and that it is ‘eco-friendly’. Available in 4oz, 8oz, and 16oz bottles. We were sent the 16oz bottles which retail at $20.89 each.

24mm Rim Tape: Orange Seal rim tape is available in 18mm, 24mm, and 45mm widths to fit most rims and is claimed to have ‘greater flexibility in fitting different types of rims and form factors‘. The 24mm roll goes for MSRP of $12.99 each.

The Good: Those of you who have used Orange Seal sealant in the past can expect similar performance, but the sealant seems to be holding up a bit better than I recall the older stuff did. That’s likely a very good thing. In my experience, I have had very positive outcomes using Orange Seal sealant. Punctures have sealed up fine for me in the past using this product. It also tends to be better at initial sealing of casings and bead/rim interfaces than some other sealants I’ve tried. So, if you look at the sealant here I can give it high marks. It’s good stuff.

The Not So Good: The VersaValve is a unique take on a tubeless valve stem. I liked that you could select the best possible rubber bit to interface with whatever rim I wanted to set up. That said, I am not a fan of aluminum tubeless valve stems, and the VersaValve kit showed me again why that is.

One of the stems was fine, but the other had somehow had its threads rolled and the Presta valve nut would not thread on to it properly. Furthermore; the nuts themselves, while looking cool, were fiddly to start to thread on any valve stem I tried. The risk of cross threading one of these is pretty high, in my opinion. Not good.

The 24mm Rim Tape came with its own alcohol cleaning wipe, which was a thoughtful touch. However; Orange Seal’s claim of elasticity and ability to conform to a rim’s interior well was not found to hold up at all. The tape was actually pretty stiff and brittle. In fact, it kept splitting on my attempts to gently lay it down into a Shimano GRX wheel I was trying to use it on.

I generally don’t find many products I don’t recommend anymore, but in 2020, with so many great choices for rim tape to use for tubeless tire set ups, this Orange Seal tape cannot be recommended. At least not if this roll I was sent is any indication of what to expect from other rolls of this tape. I was pretty disappointed with my experience with this particular accessory.

At The Finish: What a mixed bag of results! The sealant is really top shelf stuff. Orange Seal has a high reputation with many riders and deservedly so. I can heartily recommend the sealant. The VersaValve Kit is problematic. Maybe I received a slightly damaged example? Could be. If the general performance over all is more like the one valve that worked, I’d say watch out with the threading on of the valve nut, but otherwise, this is good stuff. If; however; the messed up threading I found on the other valve is more common than my example, I’d steer clear and look at other options. The tape? Ah……no. It doesn’t measure up at all. Not recommended.

Get the sealant. Maybe the valves are really okay, but look at other options for the taping up of your rims.

Note: Orange Seal sent over the VersaValve Kit, Endurance Sealant, and Rim Tape at no charge to Riding Gravel for test and review. We were not paid, nor bribed for this review and we strive to give our honest thoughts and views throughout.