Orange Seal tyre sealant review

Tubeless tyre technology is gaining traction on the road. As well as tubeless ready wheels to ensure an airtight and safe connection between the rims and tyre beads, and tubless-ready tyres, you’ll need a sealant to make everything airtight and provide puncture protection. Sealants are becoming more sophisticated. Most are still latex based, but increasingly they include additives to improve sealant performance and puncture protection.

Orange Seal is a US brand of latex based tyre sealant. Along with its colour its main characteristic is quite a gritty texture due to the included particles, which the company calls nanites. These help to plug up any leaks effectively as they are of differing sizes and shapes, helping to form a matrix to seal the hole with the latex making it airtight.

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Orange Seal claims that its formula is more effective at coating the inside of the tyre than competitors’ offerings and works over a wide temperature and altitude range. In addition to the standard formula which we’ve tested, there’s an Endurance version which Orange Seal claims will last up to three times as long.

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I’ve used Orange Seal sealant to mount tubeless-ready tyres, where I got a quick seal without difficulty. It has also mended a flat in a cyclocross tub, which is now as airtight as when it was new. It’s easy to apply as the bottle comes with an applicator tube to squirt the sealant through the valve after the core has been removed.

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It does seem to gum up the valves a bit though, so that you really need a good track pump to get the tyre up to pressure. This would make it tricky to reinflate a tube if you got a flat or a significant loss of pressure when out on the road.