Re: [RBW] TPU inner tubes - Anyone using them?

[Harry Travis]

Ted: I am interested in all parts and the whole  of your report. Assuming you are saving a plausible 8 watts per pair of tires and riding hard or briskly, you would not be riding a lot faster, but you could enjoy the latex-tube feel and the ease you have when pushing hard and having a bit more. bicycle rolling resistance tested 4 or 5 them, including unmarked rebadges. Cost aside and despite what seems, post Covid experience,  an explosion in the market for tpu gloves, it is no surprise to me that the QC has not developed for the tube -stem interface with the new material. It is a trailing edge niche market, what with lower pressures permitting greater adoption of tubeless.   I doubt the number of engineers have been at work on the problem as have developed reliable attachment of tube and stem over more than a century and in hundreds of factories. On the attractiveness of the compact size for backup / spare. Yes, we've been there before with CO2 cartridges. How many are enough, three? Haha. And a back-up for the inflator? How burdensome, instead, is a mini-pump? TPU Inner Tubes Test bicyclerollingresistance.com -- Harry P Travis 17.4.1 On May 7, 2024, at 4:02 PM, Ted Durant <teddur...@gmail.com> wrote: Update on my experience. I continue to like the ones that successfully inflated on my 700x32 tires. Yesterday I took out that bike for the first time in a couple of weeks and the tires were quite soft. So, the tubes don't retain air as well as butyl, but it's not worse enough to be a problem. And I did a pretty hard ride and was pleased with how fast it ended up being. I also ordered some 650x48 tubes, but RH sent me 700x48. By the time they responded to my inquiry they were sold out of the 650's. Fortunately the next batch arrived pretty quickly and they promptly sent them to me. I mounted those today and once again needed 3 tubes to get 2 wheels done. These ones felt sturdier than the 700c skinny ones, but maybe it was just the extra width. Installation went fine, but as I inflated it the valve stem got sucked up into the rim. Weird! Deflated, checked for any snagging, and tried again, same result. Repeat, same result. So I decided to remove the tube and see what was going on. The tube came right out of the tire, minus the valve stem which this time stayed firmly put in the rim, fully detached from the tube. RH still hasn't responded to my inquiry about the two 700c tubes that failed, which I sent back with the mis-shipped tubes. After this one, at 3 out 9 tubes failing, I am well put off by these. I certainly wouldn't carry one as a spare ... I'd have to carry at least three to feel confident that in crappy field conditions and dead tired I'd be able to successfully install one. I also think that doing a patch in the field would be a roll of the dice - no way to be sure you could get the tube out without tearing it.  I'm very interested to hear the experience of others. Could be user error. But I have over 50 years of wrenching experience, including 2 summers in a bike shop, so if these are beyond my skill level, it's pretty hard to see how these would be useful to anyone but a competitive rider with a budget (or product sponsorship) and highly skilled support. Ted Durant Milwaukee WI USA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rbw-owners-bunch/Y5KV2I6s9fo/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/06c6994e-cde8-473d-9a17-0d4db2e87504n%40googlegroups.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/B73B687B-18FF-4953-BE07-01C8F11D75C0%40gmail.com.