Zefal Tubeless Repair Kit

If the hole in your tyre is too big for the sealant to work, Zefal's Tubeless Repair Kit is a simple and effective solution that avoids the faff of fitting a tube – or even removing the tyre. It includes six plugs in two sizes and a tool for inserting them, is light, cheap and no bigger than a regular repair kit. There's little not to like.

I'm lucky enough to puncture very rarely out on the road, but I've picked up a fair few on gravel trails. With the majority of tyres I'm testing being set up tubeless, having some way of plugging a large hole is welcome.

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This kit is small and lightweight, so it takes up barely any room in your pocket, bag or seatpack. It contains six plugs – three 2mm and three 5mm diameter, all 50mm long – and can, Zefal says, fill holes between 1mm and 5mm. It also includes the needle tool for inserting them.

As luck(?) would have it, a sharp rock caught my 38mm Hutchinson Override rear tyre on one descent and left a gash about 3mm long and 1mm wide. The sealant did a reasonable job of gumming up the hole, but I was about 30 miles from home with nothing but remote gravel tracks in front of me.

> Buyer's guide to tubeless tyres — find out all about new technology rubber

Rather than risk it opening up again, and using up what little sealant I had left, I decided to plug it. It's a simple task, and basically the same as plugging a car or motorcycle tyre.

With a plug strip in the groove on the tool, you use the needle to push it into the hole and give it a few twists. Then you slowly withdrawal the needle, leaving the plug in place with just a bit of each end exposed. It takes a bit of wriggling and tweaking to get everything seated right, but it's much easier than taking the tyre off to patch it or put a tube in.

I found the fix worked well: the hole stayed plugged as I rode the 30 miles of gravel home, with no leakage or issues at all. I later did a couple of shorter gravel rides on the fixed tyre with no problems too, before swapping to the next set of test tyres – if I hadn't had to, I wouldn't have bothered changing the Hutchinson, as the plug looked secure and pretty permanent.

At £7.99 it isn't badly priced either, especially if you value your time and energy out on the trails. Lezyne's Classic Tubeless Kit has a slightly more elaborately machined needle tool, if aesthetics are important, but comes with only five plugs for £10.

David was really impressed with the Dynaplug Racer Tubeless Repair Kit too, but that costs £34.99. It looks a much neater solution and is designed specifically for road tyres, though, whereas the Zefal uses a more generic plug aimed at all sorts of applications.

The Zefal Tubeless Repair Kit is simple, light, cheap and worth packing as it may just get you of a jam.

Verdict

A neat and simple solution to punctures your sealant can't handle