Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Inner tube damage

Rubber inner tube? I don't even know her!

Thanks for all your tips guys. I have chosen to cover the heads of the nipples with "marine mastic" - a polyurethane adhesive/filler/sealant which sets hard enough to be sanded and painted, when smoothed over with lots of soapy water and bare fingers it leaves a tough, hard surface. I hope this will prevent the tube getting nipped. There are a couple of pictures here :- http://www.bleazey.co.uk/M3W.html#PROP

I would strongly recommend that you look closely at your tubes when having new tyres fitted. From the comments above it seems not to affect everyone. When fitting a new tyre and tube - naturally enough - the fitter will probably not inspect the old discarded one for damage. Being the tightwad that I am I wanted to re-use the old ones so inspected them closely.

I've never reused inner tubes on my motorcycles. Never cut corners on safety issues. I also wouldn't gum up / coat the spoke nipples.

So give me another answer?

Why - I can't imagine this would hurt anything - it's not like these are a service item. You're never going to tighten spokes or re-true the wheel yourself under any scenario I can imagine. And of course wire wheels made for tubeless tires have a bead of sealant similar to this run around the spoke nipples inside the rim to make them air-tight.

Only thing I would be careful of is ensuring that there is none on the section of the rim where the tire bead seats.

I also worried about getting stuff under the bead but I now think that the load at the base of the bead is lifted from the rim when the tyre is inflated and that the friction to hold the tyre from turning under braking is all on the side of the bead. It's very hard to know what is going on when you can't get in there to see!!!

While I get the bit about "yourself" since most people do not have experience or the equipment to true a wire wheel. My concern would be for the people that do. I'm not familiar with the product that Phil used, but if it dries to a hardness where you have to grind or chip it off it seems like that could make could give someone an awful headache.

Pretty much every place I've been cut up the old tube and used some contact adhesive to stick it in place over the spokes. I guess that wouldn't work here cause of the location of the spokes themselves?

Cup brush on a small grinder gets it off. I'll enquire as to the possibility of a chemical cleaner. For the time being anything is preferable to the nagging worry of a front wheel puncture at speed on busy English motorways. As to gluing anything over the nipples - you are right - they are 90% covered by the tyre bead; it's the other 10% that does the damage.

Hell, sounds like given the right application could be a test bed for tubeless.

I just wonder if a narrow what is that 15mm wide band were cut from the old tube and glued directly over the spokes. I don't think that would be prohibitive to setting the bead would it.

I know the rim tape goes right under the bead on the MGB and it has no problem. I could definitely see against having that go up the wall, but to me it seems like a good application for making some DIY bands with the old tubes.

Maybe I'm just totally off base though.

Not off base at all, in my opinion. The MGB example helps to show what goes in in there. I will try cutting up the old tubes for rim bands and see how they look although it would be nice to have something with a feathered edge. They would have to be well stuck in place to make sure they didn't move while fitting the tyre. I wonder if Blockley would consider making a proper rim band? I'll ask.