If you haven’t already gone tubeless, do it – it’ll change your life as it’s one of the easiest MTB upgrades there is.
However, don’t use Orange Seal or you’ll end up wondering why you bothered in the first place! Despite being very attractive and coming well recommended by my local LBS, I quickly found out that Orange Seal is as good as stopping punctures as an actual seal would be peeling oranges… go figure.
Here’s a TL;DR for you: Orange Seal Tubeless fluid is utter garbage.
Orange Seal Tyre Sealant Review
My initial impressions were good and at £13 a bottle it is a pretty average price to pay for sealant and it would be… if it lasted.
I set up my TR Maxxis High Roller and Shorty on my Superstar Tech 4’s without any trouble whatsoever thanks to my trusty Airwave Airblast and they held well overnight without losing any air. Off to a good start!
Sadly it wasn’t to last. Three rides later and I had a puncture that wouldn’t seal at all, pulled the tire off to chuck an inner tube in and there was no sealant left at all!
In less than 2 weeks every ounce of Orange Seal that I’d put in my tyres was gone! My bike is kept inside at a pretty constant temperature, I had no major leaks or issues with the tire sealing and yet somehow all this orange liquid had disappeared.
For the sake of being fair I filled up my tire with sealant again and tried to see if it would stick around for a little bit longer this time. To be fair to it, it did – almost exactly a month after I’d put more sealant in I had the tiniest of punctures in my High Roller – right in the middle of the tread. Instead of filling the hole like you would expect it to, I had lots of little orange bubbles surfacing but the air managed to hold more or less until I got home.
Tyre off once again, and guess what? Hardly any fluid in there at all – one month and gone!
Needless to say, it was back to Stans for me!
