The spoke nipples, are the components that keep spoke wheels from being airtight, and they will flat your tire. Thus the need for rim strips and inner tubes. Some rims have spokes outside the pressure cavity and thus do not need tubes or rim strips. The Tiger 800 XC for one. Motorcyclist, "The 32-spoke wheels feature anodized-aluminum rims with twin spoke flanges where the fixed ends hook through; the threaded nipple rides on the hub side. You've seen a similar approach on the Yamaha Super Tenere. Supposedly, you get the benefits of a spoke wheel—namely, tolerance of abuse—while still running tubeless tires, which are the same size as the base bike. The weight penalty for all this mild farkling? Triumph lists the XC’s curb weight as 586 pounds, or 16 more than the non-XC version."
