Red inner tube

rotorwrench said:
Natural rubber, not vulcanized, is white. When vulcanized it sort of turns gray. Adding carbon black makes them black. My thoughts would be that they were made in a time where carbon black was hard to get. Generally during war time. WWII & Korea were both such times. The rubber was cured & vulcanized with some form of red colored material added. I figure it was red lead since it was a curing agent used for some formulas of rubber.
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Yep this is my understanding also. The reason tires are black is because they do add carbon so they don't look dirty. Well back in the day anyway, today well no idea if tires are rubber at all, they really are a Marvell of science, if you really think about it.



Red was probably just a marketing thing to draw people to the tubes.


google: ford model n


Rubber is white.
 

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I still run across red tubes in old tires and rims from the 20s 30s and 40s. Like has been said some of them still hold air.
 
That’s cool that there’s still aNOS one around. Don’t think I trust a eighty year old tube though. But who knows, might out last the modern stuff.
 
I have been having no fun at all with modern overseas tubes. I would have gladly mounted that ebay tube in one of my tires. I finally ordered some firestone ag tubes. They came labeled 'made in china'. I'd put my money on the red tube. Not sure about 76 bucks, but it sure looks to be in sound condition. Thanks for posting it. I'm kind of a tire geek.
 
GB SISSON said:
I have been having no fun at all with modern overseas tubes. I would have gladly mounted that ebay tube in one of my tires. I finally ordered some firestone ag tubes. They came labeled 'made in china'. I'd put my money on the red tube. Not sure about 76 bucks, but it sure looks to be in sound condition. Thanks for posting it. I'm kind of a tire geek.
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OK, Tire Geek, I've got one for you. When I bought my '38 in 1990, it had an old beat up spare tire, which went away pretty quickly, but I did save the inner tube just for kicks... It is black, and was a run-flat tube. An inner-inner tube made it almost as heavy as the tire itself. It's up in my loft somewhere, and if memory serves, it has several vulcanized patches on it. Maybe I'll put it on FleaPay for say, $76 buy-it-now. Caveat emptor.
 
ford38v8 said:
If you're like I was as a kid, I would shoot accurately at targets, and give it a little extra when shooting at a bird. Invariably, that extra hard pull would break my rubber, which of course was a genuine pain to the shooter. Years later, I made slingshots for my boys using surgical tubing. They somehow weren't interested, but pity those birds of my youth if I had had surgical tubing!
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Um yeah...I see what you did there.
 
Tires and tubes need flexibility and a lot of it. Carbon black was added to synthetic rubbers to get more tensile strength and plasticizers are added for more flexibility. The ingredients just happen to make it black. Natural rubber already has an inherent tensile strength and flexibility when certain additives are added prior to vulcanization but they can't grow enough rubber trees to meet the demand.

The military did studies on the best "formula" for synthetic butyl rubber for aircraft tire tubes way back when and found that there is a bit of a trade off in the mix they chose. They wanted something that could take a lot of heat and also still perform well under very cold conditions. This wasn't an easy task to fulfill but the trade off works well enough in both situations to get by with some measure of reliability
 
Got a red inner tube out of a tire off a 29 fire truck ,it has since been cut up and used for paddin between frame and gasoline tank still have some but it's cracked up a bit .
 
When I was a 16 yr old kid I took one out of my dad's 34 Ford spare tire aired it up took it to the local swimming hole for some reason on the way home it exploded in the back seat of my car behind my head.liked to run off the road thought I had been shot..
 
I honestly don't know what's the big deal about red inner tubes. Back in the day, they were as common as dirt.

Hmm... Maybe that's why when I flirt with the cute girlies at the grocery store that they giggle and tell me I'm old as dirt?
 
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