Check your new inner tubes

[mhsprecher]

I installed new American Classic radials and the radial specific tubes on my car last week before heading to the Old Car Festival. I drove the 1.5 miles or so from my hotel to the OCF and when I went to park my car, I was told that I had a flat tire! I had just checked that tire at the hotel and it had 35 psi!

I changed to my spare tire and assumed that I had pinched the tube when I installed it. This morning I took the tube out of the flat tire and realized that the flat was due to a defect in the tube! I notified Coker and they are shipping out a new tube, but I wanted to share this with the Model A community in the hope that it might save someone a flat tire.

As you can see from the attached photo, it appears that a patch was put on the tube during the manufacturing process. The tube failed between the "patch" and the rest of the tube.

My reason for posting is to suggest that you look closely at new tubes before you install them to see if there are any defects in them. Hopefully this is a rare occurrence, but checking the tubes may save you a flat tire. I water tested the tubes that I put new metal valve stems in, but not the two that came with the metal valve stems already installed. I don't know if I would have noticed the defect in the tube had I inspected it, but it would not have hurt to have done so.