The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Tubes in bias ply tires

What Jerry said.

Kevin, please let me add something. For what it is worth I would not use tubes today in anything other than farm equipment. A friend who operated a tire store here told me a couple of years before he retired he had stopped using tubes completely because he couldn't guarantee them and they worried him too much. I asked him because of failures? He answered well, yeah...but it is more than that. Failures and the loss of control & wrecks that followed plus people today have the incorrect idea they can make a tire or a rim that has problems work okay if they just put a tube in it. Which according to him once upon a time was okay but today was very dangerous. He said tubes are not made as well as they used to be, it doesn't take much to make them fail and his experience was often they fail at highway speeds. He said on the highway when the tire, wheel, tube gets hotter, the stress on all those parts could put you on borrowed time because the tube is the weakest link. Hope it helps.