Lezyne Tubeless CO2 Blaster

Lezyne's Tubeless CO2 Blaster is an innovative solution to getting your tubeless tyres sealed and inflated, and with a simple design tweak it'd be really useful, but as it stands it feels a bit compromised.

The Tubeless CO2 Blaster is a slightly different take on the tubeless fix kit. If you've got a hole in your tyre that's too big for the sealant to deal with on its own then your usual go-to is a rubber plug, or worm, that you poke into the hole to seal it up. Normally you'll ream the sides of the hole to roughen them up a bit, poke the worm in with a forked tool (often the reaming tool does both jobs) and then inflate the tyre with a pump or a CO2 canister.

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The Tubeless CO2 Blaster works slightly differently in that the reaming tool is also an inflator. So once you've used the reaming tool to prep the hole, you shove the worm in and use the Blaster to inflate the tyre there and then.

Once it's up, there's an aluminium sleeve that you can use to keep the worm in place while you pull the tool out. And lo! Your tyre is sealed and inflated and ready to go.

You get the tool, some worms and two 20g CO2 canisters in a holder that'll fit into your pocket or you can strap to your frame.

It's a neat idea but in practical terms it has some drawbacks. The main one is that you need to get your pressure just so, and you also need to make sure/hope that you don't lose any air when you're removing the tool. The Blaster doesn't work as a standard inflator through the valve, so the only way to use it to add air to a tyre is to poke it through the carcass, which isn't something you'll want to do twice.

It seems to me that it'd be simple enough to have the reamer as a removable bit that you screwed into a standard inflator nozzle, so that if you just wanted to top up your tyre normally then that is an option too.

The way the tool works restricts it to lower pressures, so we're talking about gravel tyres and mountain bike tyres. Above about 50psi I found that the CO2 managed to find its way out around the tool, so this isn't really one for smaller volume road tyres, unless you have something else to add pressure with once the tyre is sealed. Whatever I was using it for, as it's currently designed I'd feel that I needed another inflation option, be that a pump or a standard CO2 inflator, for peace of mind. Which defeats the object a bit: you may as well just get a normal tubeless plug kit.

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So would I recommend it? I don't think so, in its current design. Make the reamer removable and offer a standard valve fitting as part of the tool too and it would make much more sense, but as it is currently it's not really a standalone solution to fixing your trailside tyre woes.

Verdict

A good idea for one-stop plugging and inflating of tubeless tyres, but needs a design tweak