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I know there is a lot of concern among Classic owners with tubes about tubes, and I wanted to share my experience from this past weekend. My friend and I split off from the group we'd been riding with to Iron Butt it from Ft. Collins to Milwaukee on Saturday. Somewhere in Iowa, I started getting a wobbley/shake at 80mph. I pulled over in a Rest Area to inspect - front and rear tire both full of air... Chalked it up to highway expansion joints and got back on the road. Made it another mile, shake is back - pull over roadside. Check the tire again, no issues there. Start a checklist in my head of possible causes. Rear wheel play? Nope. Steering damper failed? Nope. Side cases completely secured? Yup. Shock blown? Nope. Scratch head. Roll the wheel around again and notice a very small metal dot (think one end of a staple). Grab the needlenose out of my toolkit and try to extract it, hoping it's just cosmetic and hasn't breached the tire wall. Yup, it's like 4 inches long, looks like a barb from a very long construction staple. Pull it out and the puncture hole starts seeping air. So I put it back in and start weighing the options. Looks like I'm gonna be patching or replacing a tube roadside. Just for giggles, I pull out the phone and check locally, there's a KTM shop 9 miles off the exit I'm near. It's Saturday after hours, but the owner is still there. Asked if he'd mind swapping out a tube for me. Rode there slowly, lost no air en route. Fixed up and back on the road.

I guess I'm a little baffled about the tire. I assume the tubeless type tire and the tubeless type bead on the rim kept the air in, but I was always under the impression the air would just seep out the spoke nipples. Apparently not. The tube was completely severed - and I'm sure the wobble/shake was caused by it flopping around willy nilly inside the tire. I'd considered the possiblility that the flat tube was "sealing" the center of the rim, but I don't know.

Anybody wanna weigh in?

I'd always figured the air would leak around the spokes, too. But I've had three punctures on my Classic now, and never had a catastrophic blowout style deflation. They've all been on the rear and the stiff, low sidewalls probably help with this some, too.

But I don't have a real answer for you. Even if the spokes weren't leaking much, I'd guess you'd lose significant air around the valve stem.