Your favorite tubes?
 

Hi guys,

I'm about to purchase some "inflatable" tubular tires, but before I do I would like to know which tubes are your favorites.
Off course I'm looking for the best bang for the buck and I came across some Swallow Montello tubes, but does anyone know if they're any good?
Thanks for helping out and looking forward to hearing what tubes you all prefer.

Reynolds 531. :D


or perhaps you mean inflatable tubes. Continentals seem pretty reliable. A couple weekends ago I bought a Kenda, and it came pre-punctured. :(

Did you have to pay extra to have the tube pre-punctured?
2Fer

Haha, sorry for the confusion...I meant inflatable tubes. But yes, I also like my Reynolds 531c a lot:)

It only seemed like it. :o

Favorites: Conti and Giant. Worst: Bontrager (BANG! Right out of the box).

Recently, I switched to Schwalbe Marathon Supremes, and also bought Schwalbe Tubes as part of the transaction.

Previous tubes, cheapies, Kenda, Forte, and Specialized, all seemed to lose 5% to 10% of their air every day, if inflated over 85#.

Since switching to the Schwalbe, I find they lose little, if any, air - during a weeks time.

And, they were only a couple dollars more than the cheapies.

Guess which company gets my tire and tube money from now on.....

In my limited experience, tube quality is all over the place. Some loose air quickly, some don't. Some come prepunctured, some don't. Unfortunately, I have not seen any correlation to brand. I suspect they are all made in the same crappy factory.

jim

Thanks for the info so far!

Schwalbe are nice. They even come with cool dust caps -- some of which are transparent, so you can see the (Presta) valve.

The Axiom super light is a good one, too.

I bought 10 from some guy off craigslist, at about 2 dollars apiece, how could I go wrong?

Followup - I checked the pressure in my tires this afternoon. In the last week, my tires have both lost 7#, from the original 85#. Both still well above the labelled minimum of 50.

Butttt, in the same time, the temp has gone from 60 F to 30F.

Sooooooo, they lost a little, some to seepage, some to temperature.

5 for $9.95 at Pricepoint. Thats what I use on all of my bikes.

I think of inner tubes as a fungible item.

Specialized

Groove Tubes, from England.
In a Marshall amp, great British metal sound.

+1. Just seems to be what I grab when I'm at the shop and am in need of tubes.

Happened yesterday, with Bontrager. I was ticked.

Whetever's in that dumpster there.

I suspect there are only a few places making tubes and everyone just buys from them and has them put in their branded boxes.

I like the ones in the red Specialized boxes because they come with talc and in a ziplock bag so I can toss the box and put the bag in my seat bag and it's ready to go.

personally I like 300Bs
http://www.bottlehead.com/et/adobesp...ac2008amp3.jpg

Reynolds 531...

oh, you mean inner tubes. I've never found it to matter much, as long as they're name brands.

Is that also a 12ax7 I see there?

I pulled a JC Higgins ballooner out of the dump a couple of weeks ago and it had a Sears Allstate 26x1 3/8 tube, folded over to fit and over inflated to make up the difference.
The tube was thicker and heavier than most tubular tires.

Well haha, I meant tubular tires, the ones with the inner and outer tire in one which are glued to the rim.
I'll be more specific in the future:) But thanks for the advice so far as I'll be needing inner tires as well, since I'm buying too many bikes...

I'm currently riding a pair of Vittoria competition tubes, which are pretty nice. But since I came across a deal of 8 tubes for 20 euros, I think I'll go with that deal:)