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MG TD TF 1500 - Tubes in Tires

I plan to show my mg td MKll this summer, is it necessary to put tubes in my tires to be more correct for the judges? Should I put tubes in the tires anyway just for safety reasons? I have the correct tubes and stem spacers everything is ready to go, what are your thoughts. I have been told the wheels were not meant to have tubeless tires, I do not have any air leaks, should I do this it makes me a little nervous?
Thanks
Susan
S Burnett

Search the archives, pages and pages about tube vs. tubeless are in there. Don't know about the judging. Since no one has reproduced the original Dunlap bias ply tires, whatever you have won't be correct? George
George Butz

Susan,
You should most definitely install the tubes and the valve stem washers as soon as posable.
While the tires are "tubeless" the rims are not. There is no safety bead to hold the tires on the rim. The tire an suddenly deflate with no warning.
This has been an issue at Safety Fast inspections at New England MGT Register events. No tubes is an automatic failure. There are people who have driven without tubes for years with no problems, and people who insist that you can not put a tube in a tubeless tire. It is not worth the risk. The TD has tube rims that necessate tubes.
I'm glad you brought this up, and trust that you will install the tubes as soon as possable.
-David
D. Sander

I ran mine tubeless for over 10 years with no problems. I think it is a personal choice to run with tubes or not. Most folks do not run tubes,especially in the radials. You would have to corner pretty hard to run the tire off the rim imho. I ran my car hard and never had a problem.
Tom Maine (TD8105)

Thank-you for all your comments, I will go ahead and have the tubes put in...."Safety First". My tires, of course say tubeless so I thought the Judges may have an issue with that. I had a 99.9 point Porsche Roadster Super 90, the judges were merciless, I do not know how MG judges are, any help on that would be great.
Susan
S Burnett

Totally tubeless since the mid-70s, as all of the other TD's that have come and gone in the area as well. Never a problem. Interesting that John Twist/Glenn Lenhard and other professional MG techs also say tubless unless wires on a TD, I kind of value their opinions. George
George Butz

George, I also run tubeless on my Daytons 72 spoke wires, they were made to be tubeless. I know it aint kosher on a 51 but I like em.
Tom Maine (TD8105)

You won't take a corner fast enough in a TD to tear the tire from the rim under normal circumstances, but that isn't the danger. The safety lip will ensure that the tire stays on the rim in the event you lose pressure while cornering. There are those who have run tubeless for many years without issue, but how many of them have lost pressure suddenly while on a canyon road? I suspect none. The safety lip is there primarily for this purpose, and if faced with this unfortunate situation, it can become a life and death issue. If you're confident that you will never lose tire pressure in a hard corner then you're probably safe leaving the tubes out. I prefer to spend a few extra dollars per wheel and install them. Just my 2 cents of course.
Steve Simmons

People, seriously! Tires DO deflate, I have seen it happen. Yes, it is true that may people have gotten lucky for many years running TDs without tubes with no issues.
I have seen dry rotted brake lines that haven't blown out, I've seen cars missing spring pan bolts and the suspension has held together, I've seen cars missing lug nuts and the wheel has not come off too. I've even driven for years and not needed my seat belt, but I still wear it.
You can only cheat the laws of physics for so long. Why take a chance? There is NO mechanical connection holding a tire in place on a TD rim. There is no bead on theTD rim to hold a tire, it is a tube rim. The earth is round, water is wet and TDs need tubes. Period.
David
D. Sander

I run Dayton 60's, Radials and tubes.
I corner "robustly" (to put it mildly) and have never had a problem.
IMHO: If you haven't drifted your T ...your not driving it.
Other than the yearly change from "winter air" to "summer air" , I rarely need to correct tyre presure.
David Sheward

The issue is not of the tire coming off the rim instantaneously from hard cornering per se. The problem would occur when the tire is not properly inflated. It then is subject to lose the air seal at the rim. Loss of the air seal would be rapid deflation, and could be aggravated and caused by hard cornering.
I use tubes, but many cars from the early and mid fifties started using tubeless radial tires, without tubes, as they became available on their existing rims without issue (as long as they kept adequate pressure in the tires) but the later rims were designed for the radial tire, both to lock the bead of the tire and for a seal.

IMHO
Dallas
Dallas Congleton

Susan,
I agree with all who say use tubes,, but I do have a question,,, where are you going to show your MG that has supposed "MG Judges" ??? I think we would all be interested in their evaluation of your car!!! Please keep us posted,,,,


Tubie or not Tubie,,, that is the question !!!

SPW

STEVE WINCZE

No Tubes.

No Seatbelts.

No Door safety catch (just the one that came on the car's latch)

So I don't pass the safety check.

I'll survive or I won't.

But can someone name someone who has rolled the tire of an MG TD/TF off the wheel? I can't.

Unless you put in a location for a high mount like a roll bar, then you will break your clavical just before you impale your chest on the steering column... and at my height, I probably couldn't get the leg room I would need with the roll bar so I wouldn't be driving the car anyway.

I used to tie the doors to the windshield stanchion, but that was before I fixed the latches. My goal was to keep my kids from falling out. Now, I just depend on the door latches, properly adjusted, to work.

warmly,
dave
Dave Braun

No seatbelts here...I may be wrong but the way the car is made I'll take my chances being ejected as opposed to being held captive to the frame. In a rear ender seems it would be a good protype for a trash compactor!

Dave ...My doors were well adjusted with good working latches (10 years)...untill it sat in a shop for a while on jack stands. Comming home from the shop it "poppeed" at speed. Caught it just after the "stop" broke. No damage to car ...but just about ripped my arm out of the socket. Only mention it so it sticks in your brain ...if it's up on stands/lift for a extended period...do a double take on the fit.
OK buddy?

I did pop a tyre off "bead" years ago. That was with the stock 48 spokes & (old) bias ply's. More due to lose spokes and "hard" tyres than anything else though.

Cheers,
David
David Sheward

Dave, I am with you. I have never seen,heard or talked to anyone that had a tire roll off. Many I know, including myself and you have put thousands of miles on our cars and never had a tire roll off. It seems to me that it takes a lot of work to pu t a tire on, rolling off does not seem to be an issue. I do have a seat belt for my wife, not for me.
Tom Maine (TD8105)

Well there ya go, David has lost a tire from a TD rim. For those who require a known name to believe it can happen, there it is. I've also seen tires off rims *not mine) that weren't running tubes although they were admittedly being run very hard. Chances are, you'll be fine without tubes but things that can happen, will happen somewhere, sometime. Want to gamble whether or not it will be you that it happens to? Not me. And I hope whoever it happens to isn't anywhere near my family when it does!
Steve Simmons

Forgot to add... I questioned a wire wheel manufacturer about tubeless rims and got a response that only wider sizes were available is tubeless because the narrower ones did not have the required safety bead. I tend to go with their recommendations. What I did not ask at the time however was whether or not a wider size, and therefore lower tire profile, would offer greater "staying power" of the tire to the rim. This could be one reason why narrower sizes have not been offered in tubeless. Just a guess on my part.
Steve Simmons

I presume david Sheward had tubes in his wire wheels( 48 spokes) so what does this prove?
I believe the crysler cars in the 40's ( before the tubeless era) had the extra ridge in their wheels which we called "safety rims". It was supposed to keep an airless tire on the rim which probably would give you more traction than a steel rim skidding on the asphalt. Later on all the wheels
got the ridge. It made "breaking the bead" a lot harder. I had a '41 chevy and no money for good tires so I had lots of flat tires ( mostly caused by tube failures due to pinching by the "boots" in my crappy tires. I read that over 50% of all flat tires were due to tube failures. The tubeless tire makers may have sponsered the study, however.
With all the flats I had, I never lost control of my car. It's pretty easy to feel when a tire is low on air, IMHO.
I'm going out to check the tire pressure in my tubeless TD tires right now!
Chuck (Not so Safety fast)
cj schmit

Chuck,
You are 100% correct! 48 spoke wheels (with lose / broken spokes) old bias ply tyres that were on the car when I bought it (reminded me of my little red wagon way it rode..hard as rocks) and they had tubes in them.
After getting an estimate to re-do the old 48's, it was a no brainer to me. For 1/2 the cost of refurbish on the old wheels I got wider 60's & radial tyres. At the time any car I had ever owned with wires had tubes in them so I ordered tubes.
I was told by my tyre guy I "didn't really need the tubes" but he said he felt would be safer with them if I planned on cornering hard. Allready had 2 tubes for the boat...five more seemed overkill. I trusted him ..and have been cornering hard ever since! ;-)

Right / Wrong? ...I don't know, but works for me.
David Sheward

In the early days of tubeless radial tires, tubes were definitely the primary cause of flats because most people didn't understand that you can't use a tube made for a bias-ply tire inside a tubeless radial tire. The friction is too great for the older tubes to handle, so they come apart under the heat and chaffing. You have to use a tube made specifically for this purpose. Today you would be hard-pressed to find the old type of tube since the newer, stronger tubes work in both tire types.
Steve S

Hi Guys,
Again thank-you for all your answers, but the next question is.......do I put Rim Bands on with the tubes?? I plan to show my car in Carmel in August, at The Concours on The Avenue. This will be my first show so I will let you know what the deal is.
Thanks again,
Susan
S Burnett

Rim bands are only needed for wire wheels. So if wire , then yes. If stock steel wheels then no. For whatever it's worth I've got the same tires on the TD and the TF. Tubes in the wire wheeled TF and none in the TD.
LaVerne

Susan,

I would be curious as to the preferences of the judges. What is important? Condition or originality. At what price safety?

As Geo. Butz has pointed out, no one has produced an (original) bias ply tire in 25 years. So there's a point lost right away. What about door stops and seat belts?

That's one of the nice features of the "Patina" award at Concours. The car can look like a real dog with 300,000 miles on it, but is totally original including 60 year old paint - absolutely NO mods.

Its not fair that someone who regularly drives his MG including to the show, should have to compete with a Trailer Queen.

I could tell you a story about Pebble Beach in 1979 while I was living in CA. The most ridiculuous judging I've ever seen - but that's a story best left for another day.

Susan, please let us know how you do.

Gord Clark
Rockburn, Qué.
Gordon A Clark

If not using rim bands, make sure the inner surface of the rim is smooth with no sharp edges or rust.
George Butz

FYI,
This is copied from The Concours on The Avenue rules;
.
8. Modifications required by Federal Law and safety items (seat belts, mirrors, exhaust, etc.) are acceptable if they do not detract from the original appearance of the entry.
9. Replacement components such as tires, spark plugs, battery, etc. must conform to the original profile. Tires must be fitted to the original rims. The spare tire must match unless it is an original special item.
STEVE WINCZE

#'s 8 & 9 blow me out of the water.
No seatbelts, 60 spoke w/ P205 70R 15 radials.
But it is fun to drive! LOL
David Sheward

This thread was discussed between 04/04/2012 and 10/04/2012

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