nathant53

Hello!



I just bought a wal-mart universal bell tube. ( bought for $3 )

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with these??

Are they any good? How long do they last?

nathant53

well, I really have problems with my tubes lately, my rear wheel's tube pop for no apparent reason. I never rode it in the last couple of days. It was fine yesterday, until today I checked it, it was total flat.

I ran to wal mart and bought one of those universal tubes 700c x35/45, and I manage to install it without having it pinching.

I was just wondering how any of your experiences with wal-mart tubes were a good or bad one.

I have a big ride coming up this week and I don't wanna miss out with a flat.

carleton

Sorry, I deleted my first post.

I would thoroughly inspect the inside of the tire, rim, and rim tape. I use Velox rim tape. It's heavy compared to some of the light stuff, but it works very very well.

Secondly, I would learn how to install a tire properly. Not being rude or assuming that you don't know, but most people don't know. I would ask for a guide in the Mechanics forum. I'm sure there is a good reference somewhere.

nathant53

I checked the tire and rim before I installed the new tube in. Everything checked out fine. I'm just concerned that wal-mart tubes aren't really reliable.

I'm using a 700 x 28 tire with a 700 x 35/45 tube, I know that sounds crazy, but I managed to make it fit without any pinching.

carleton

I'm going to move this to the mechanics forum as this is not a SSFG issue.

Kimmo

Cheap tubes are prolly heavier, and thus likely to be more reliable, if they're not absolute rubbish.

If you can slip your lightly-inflated tube inside the tyre no worries, it's a good size. Problems with the wrong sized tube are most likely when it's too small, and has to stretch a lot before it can bear on the tyre, assuming you're smart enough not to stuff a folded 26" tube into a 24" tyre...

DieselDan

I think I have a few around that have been reliable. I can't use their road bike presta valve tubes, as those valve stems are too short for Mavic CXP-33 rims.

BikeWise1

The only thing I can tell you is that my Bell rep says Walmart pays about $.23 per tube and sells them for $3-4. Nice profit.....

There isn't a single item in my shop that comes close to that kind of markup. Not even tubes!

jco1385

true enough, but the shop i go to gets $7-8 per (but they are Specialized vs Bell). i use the $3 wal-mart tubes. never had a problem that was the fault of the tube. and yeah, they only have short presta stems, so any deep rim will need something else.

DRietz

If I'm putting in a big order at PricePoint, I usually throw this in my basket...

https://www.pricepoint.com/detail/174...-Set-of-10.htm

nymtber

I have used the tubes from price point and Jensonusa, and always have had very good quality tubes. In fact I think the ones in my mountain bike are the same ones I put in back in 2001... Never an issue Velox rim tape has probably helped, as well...

bobn

How many tube manufacturing companies do you think there are? It's easy just to print a companys logo on a box and sell it for twice as much as the walmart/bell brand.

BikeWise1

With Walmart's tendencies toward constantly pushing their suppliers to make things cheaper at any cost, I seriously doubt the quality of their tubes rivals what bike shop distributors sell.

DArthurBrown

Nah. Tubes are tubes. The difference is that Walmart can say, "Sell us your tubes for a very low cost or we won't stock our thousands of stores with them." If an LBS did that, a tube company would say, "You have one small shop. We can do business without you. You can't do business without us."

Those Bell tubes are targeted at the portion of the public that wants to fix their kid's bike for as cheap as possible and not have to worry about another flat. They're a bit thicker rubber and a little less pliable. Other than that they're fine.

nathant53

Thanks for the info, I'm gonna give this tube a test ride.

But, do you think I over did the sizes?

A 700c x 28 tire with a 700c x 35/45 tube??

DRietz

Yes. I do.

FBinNY 

The reality is that there are only a handful of factories in Korea, Taiwan and China that produce garden variety butyl tubes for folks to put their own labels on, so regardless of the package, brand or distribution channel all tubes come from one of these.

While there are some quality differences between the best and the cheapest (not talking of the specialized high performance tubes here) the spectrum is fairly narrow, and there's no assurance that all the buyers of tubes directed at the LBS are any more quality conscious than the buyers for Walmart. The problem is that only the original buyer knows which factory he dealt with and what their quality standards are. Once it's in the marketers box, nobody downstream knows for sure.

As someone else mentioned, the OP's problems are probably more related to something he did than to the tube itself.

Kimmo

Depends; a lot of the time the width measurement seems pretty arbitrary.

If the tube fit in the tyre alright, it's a good size. Simple.