Modern rubber-stem tubes: brass popping-out ?!

Special Coupe Frank

Special Coupe Frank

Well-known member
My '28 has a set of four All-State WWW tires on it (21"), fairly old. I imagine the tubes were new with the tires.

This summer, I had a slow leak on the RF, once a week it would be down to 20#, I'd air it up to 35#, repeat as needed.

One day, I was adding air, and to my surprise, the threaded metal end of the valve stem began to sink into the rubber valve stem ( under pressure of holding the air-chuck against it ).:eek: :confused:

I grabbed the end of the metal core with my fingers and pulled it back out a bit, with the resultant leakage of air from the stem. :mad:

Not having time to put the spare on, or put a new tube in, I drove to the nearest auto store, bought a foot of 1/2" heater hose, and some small clamps. I sliced-off a 1" long piece of hose, slipped it down over the exterior of the valve-stem, and put the clamp around all, tightening it down good. My intention is to prevent the metal core from ejecting itself from the rubber stem while driving down the road. ;)

That band-aid has held for a couple months; now yesterday, the LF tube did the same thing.... this is the first time in 40 years of playing with tube-tires that I've had the metal pull out of the valve stem....

Anybody else run up against this ?

SC Frank
 
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now is your chance to change over to metal stems.

super glue bonds good to rubber and metal.

where i work had a batch of tubeless stems that had metal-rubber bonding problems ---they were "imported"
 
Wow, that is one I have never heard of. I guess if they are all the same tubes, you will be seeing it happen on the others as well. Be careful and good luck till you can change tubes. My tires and tubes on the roadster are over 30 years old, i'll be watching my stems, with my luck it'll happen to me too....:eek:
 
Frank, the worst of your problems is going to be that the rubber in those Allstate tires are gonna be 'hard as Chinese arithmetic!!'. Getting them off the wheel, --then back on is going to be tough. When tires are this hard, there is a strong danger in pinching a tube. Plus, if the tire is indeed that hard, it won't last long when being driven as the pavement will be abrasive to that hard rubber. You may want to do some soul-searching to decide which direction you are wanting/needing to go.


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You had time to do all that but not change to the spare..... I am not in a Nascar pit crew but changing a tire to a spare takes less than 10 minutes with a one minute break. I do carry a compact hydrolic jack and an X type lug wrench..... IMHO
 
bobbycoke said:
You had time to do all that but not change to the spare..... I am not in a Nascar pit crew but changing a tire to a spare takes less than 10 minutes with a one minute break. I do carry a compact hydrolic jack and an X type lug wrench..... IMHO
Click to expand...


Took less than five minutes to do the band-aid, and I didn't get dirty / sweaty.

Didn't say my solution was ideal; ideally, the brass cores wouldn't be popping loose from the valve stems... ;)
 
How old are the tubes?? There was a lot of trouble and a recall fairly recently of modern (tubeless) valve stems from China that were failing when nearly new.
If the tubes are marked, please post whatever they indicate about manufacturer when you get to them.
I have extracted a few of the brass inner parts entire from discarded rubber stems in order to make air connections of various sorts, and it was a FIGHT. The rubber would not and could not separate from the metal even after a long bath in carb cleaner...I ended up carving away most of the rubber with a sharp knife, then polished the rest away on a wire brush wheel. I do not think what you are seeing has anything to do with the age of the tubes but is the result of really bad manufacture with no serious bond between the brass and the rubber.
I wouldn't move the car another foot on those tubes.
 
My tires and tubes are just as old and hard as a rock cant even put a thumb tack in it saving money to by new ones. allready had two blow outs had to stick a pair of 16s in the back looks silly 16s in the back and 19s in the front haha.
 
I've had two tubes in the last couple of months that were laying around for emergency replacements that had the same problem. Not sure who they were manufactured by but needless to say they are no longer in my stach of spare parts. These were 19in. tubes
 
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I mentioned on a previous post that I had just seen a A with new tires and tubes with metal stems. The gentleman used motorcycle tubes. Tires were 19". Might be something to look into. I would also think the m/c tube might be of a "thicker" material.
Paul in CT
 
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