WTB Sealant: At The Finish – by Guitar Ted
Now that I have had to park the gravel bikes for a while as the cold winds howl across the plains here, I am going to close up this WTB Sealant review. It has been a good three months anyway, so this fits my original goal for the testing period. If you missed the introduction post, you can click on this link HERE to see that post.
Once again, what can I say when there were no significant puncture issues with regard to the testing period? (I also bemoaned this a bit with the Finish Line sealant review.) Well, hopefully you can gain something good from everything else I experienced with the WTB sealant. It’s really pretty straightforward- it works well.
As with the Finish Line sealant, the WTB Sealant was used across a couple of sets of tires. I used it in the American Classic Wentworth 700 X 50mm tires and in a set of older WTB Resolute tires. Finally, the WTB Vulpine tires were set up with the WTB sealant. In all cases I realized really good air retention properties and the sealant stayed wet throughout the testing period with very little loss in volume. Again, as with the Finish Line sealant, I was able to recover 90% or more of the WTB sealant when switching out tires.
Also, I ran up against the sealant clogging the nozzle of my injector when I was swapping tires. This is consistent with my observations with regard to how this sealant dried up quickly in a burping situation upon initial installation. (Reported on in opener- linked above) So, I would imagine a puncture would seal up well, but again, I cannot give reliable feedback in that area, if I am honest. That’s just my educated guess.
At The Finish: So, once again I see a sealant product with great initial set up traits, longevity in terms of use, but with a question mark in terms of its tire sealing capabilities. That said, this is a really great sealant when you stack it up against the more popular sealants which have come previous to this WTB product. It compares pretty directly with the aforementioned Finish Line product in terms of its performance and initial set up. So, as with that sealant, I give the WTB product high marks with the possible caveat that I cannot vouch fully for any puncture sealing capabilities since I experienced nothing noteworthy in that regard during my three months on this product. (Unless you want to count how well it coagulated in my injector when trying to recover the sealant from a tire)
I’ll be running the WTB sealant pretty steadily now for the coming year’s riding, (as I have found myself with plenty of it to use), so there will be a long term update on this product to come.
To learn more about this and other WTB products see their website here: https://www.wtb.com
NOTE: WTB sent over this product in the review for no charge to Riding Gravel for testing and review. We are not being paid, nor bribed, for this review and we will always strive to give our honest thoughts and opinions throughout.
So have used the Orange seal a few times I noticed that the regular Orange Seal worked better for me than the Endurance. I did contact the Company and they told me the shelf life on their product was 1 year. So getting ready to use the WTB I was curious on the shelf life of their product. The told me 24 months from date of Mfg. Looking forward to tryin WTB this year.