FiftySix

If that tube is standard issue Walmart quality, I got $10 saying it won't make it another year while riding the thing with a load on it.

If its made of some sort of better material, all bets are off.

fietsbob

Is that barber Sweeney Todd ?

RubeRad

?? Cheap walmart tubes are like 3x as thick as expensive ones, they last longer

acidfast7

I only use SCHWALBE tubes with my SCHWABLE tyres. Why half-ass it?

edit: Forgot the hyphen in half-ass. Corrected now.

Skipjacks

Yeah but maybe they could tend to have weaker seams and lower overall build quality

Just because the rubber is thick enough to stop a nail from penetrating doesn't mean the seams will hold together or the valve won't separate from the rubber due to just deteriorating. Cheaper glues, lower quality assurance....all these things could contribute to higher failure rates in different ways than a thinner more expensive tube would

I don't know any of this to be true. I'm just sayin'...it could be.

RubeRad

Because half-ass = half-price?

Therefore, price = ass. QED.

acidfast7

If one's time has no value.

RubeRad

The more of a cheapskate one is, the less value time has relative to money. I am the cheapest of skates.

MadKaw

Although, if I were programming a bot, I would program it to say, "I'm not a bot!"
Wouldn't you?

Skipjacks

But would you? All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would program the bot to say it is not a bot? Now, a clever man would program the bot to say it is not a bot, because he would know that only a great fool would believe the answer he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not believe you would program the bot to admit it is a bot. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not believe that you would program a bot to deny it was a bot!

Korina

@Skipjacks, and never get involved in land wars in Asia!

Thanks for the chortle.

Mr. Wiggles

I had the exact same thing happen on my commute home one day. Made the mistake of inflating without my glasses on. Bad mistake.

biketube guy

If you want to geek out on tubes, here you go: Although this type of explosion is usually the result of a section of tube being stuck between the bead and rim, excessive pressure can force a bead off a rim, and when the tube escapes it expands and explodes. (BTW a tire set up tubeless will come off a rim much easier because inner tubes tend to force the bead to stay under the rim hook). Tires do in fact get bigger in diameter as pressure increases, but not enough to damage the tube. Factories have cost-cutting tricks to produce cheap tubes, including; 1) inexpensive additives to make the butyl rubber "go farther", 2) the extrusion process is sped up, causing the wall of the tube to vary excessively, resulting in thin spots, 3) inadequate filtering of the butyl, leaving granular contaminants in the rubber, which cause pinhole failures, 4) cheap or poorly controlled valve production resulting in rubber around the valve not galvanizing properly with the rest of the tube, which is why you see "cut" failures around there. Tubes do deteriorate over time, especially if left in the sun. Using a tube that is slightly undersized is generally not a problem if the quality is good, although if extremely undersized, you will feel the area around the valve as a *whump* when you ride, because that area is reinforced and does not stretch as much as the rest of the tube.

RubeRad

Very interesting, thanks!

cp256

I was 12 or 13 when I first repaired a flat by myself. I had to walk my bike a half mile to the local gas station for some air. That was uneventful and while riding my bike home I stopped to watch a guy flying a gas powered model airplane on a tether. Around and around it screamed until all of a sudden BANG!!! and the plane augered into the ground somewhat spectacularly, with pieces flying everywhere. Of course it was my new inner tube that had exploded from being twisted and the pilot must have jerked the tether when it startled him. He and his friends were much older than I was and I realized that I might be in danger of a beating if they figured out that the explosion was from my tire. I tried to look just as bewildered as they did. I was fortunately far enough away from them that they couldn't see that my tire was flat and I was able to innocently walk my bike away from them without being accosted.

After I figured out what happened to that tube I learned to make sure freshly changed tubes weren't twisted before fully inflating them.

RubeRad

That's funny! I also started repairing tubes frequently at age 12-13 because I used a bike to deliver newspapers. I learned the hard way that you cannot have ANY amount of tube sticking out and rubbing on the frame.

julius rensch

Welcome to the Big Bang Theory of discount purchases, Skipjacks

Renato GF Naso

I've got myself, later on, a pump with manometer!! (Those 'explosions' happened to me as I was a teenager, back in the 60s...)

BadGrandma

An exploding tube is much more exciting if it blows in the church nave. (I was cleaning the sanctuary).

LDBenjamin

The only time I had a bead failure was after replacing the tires and inner tubes on a 1960s era balloon tire cruiser. The guy at the bike shop asked me if I'd ever mounted a balloon tire before (I hadn't). He said that I should have inflated it slowly, rotating and inspecting it carefully to make sure that the bead was seating properly in the rim. Inflating it like it was a narrow racing tire won't work.

The bead popped off the rim at a high point while I was riding, allowing the tube to exit and explode with a sound like a gun going off, shredding the tire in the process.

FiftySix

It's a $10 bet.

For charity.

And I'm the charity if I win.

I-Like-To-Bike

And maybe tubes sold by Walmart last 3 times longer than the name brand tube sold at your favorite LBS. Why not, it could be?

Anybody can post any sort of baloney to fit their preconception, bias or agenda without a shred of evidence just by qualifying the fabricated factoid with "just sayin' ".

Darth Lefty 

Why would she?

This thread has become very strange.

Skipjacks

It wasn't baloney. It was a reasonable scenario.

Saying Wal Mart Tubes fail because the glue used by the aliens who make them disintegrates in Earth's nitrogen heavy atmosphere is baloney.

Saying that cheap parts might have some quality assurance issues isn't exactly going out on a limb.

Skipjacks

"She" was the only clear way out of the riddle I could find too.