The 'E' Type Forum

Hi all,
I just received a new set of wire wheels from MWS. The spoke nipples are sealed on the inside of the rim and there is a special valve qualifying them for use with tubeless tyres.
Honestly I dont trust these features regarding reliability and tend to use tubes as in the (troublefree 60kmiles) past.
What is your experience?

Thank you

My 2 sets of MWS tubeless wheels work fine.

No problems with tubeless for me been useing them for years........i found that a small puncture in a tube and the tyre would go flat straight away.......with tubeless you can just have a slow puncture and have some warning of a problem....Steve

Thank you for your input, thats reassuring. I'll give it a try
Anybody interested in a set of rim bands and tubes ; ))

I had tubeless on my Morgan Plus 8 with no issues. Just feel assured by the person fitting the tyres though.

Mark,

I've been running my tubeless MWS wheels for 17 years now without tubes, no problem. Maybe their sealing method will fail one day, but I'm thinking it''s pretty well proven at this point.

I changed to MWS tubeless with new tyres, a year ago. They work fine although they seem to need topping up more regularly than when i had tubed tyres.

thank you all, I ll report back

In addition to the correct sealing of the nipples with silicon, maybe a point to verify is whether the wire wheel has the safety ribs on the rim, as advocated by Dougal:



A Borrani wire wheel for E-Type does not have such safety ribs and therefore requires a tube:

I strongly advise fitting inner tubes in wire wheels. there is more evidence on here.

https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/classi ... tubes.html

Its just not worth the risk. we have seen too many failures.

there is no reason to not fit a tube.

(However you should not fit a tyre less than 70 profile with a tube. but they are no good on an e-type anyway.)

My MWS tubeless + Dunlop 185/15's are doing well now for the last three years.

My personal choice is based in my personal experience.
I have MWS wires too old to be tubeless type, and which don’t therefore have the safety rim feature detailed by Dougal.
I have had several flat tyres over the years and miles. Two were due to badly fitted tubes, a fault which can be firmly blamed on the PO, a famous and now defunct retailer of E-Types. All other flats were due to foreign objects, all on well worn tyres, and two of them were high speed sudden deflations (not blowouts). One of these was on the M5 approaching the Avon Bridge, the other was on the A29 approaching Le Havre. Both were outside rear tyres, both required that I immediately pull on the hard shoulder…….. except there wasn’t a hard shoulder on the M5 at that point.

Tubeless wheels in these two circumstances would have allowed me to drive, slowly off the motorway or into a refuge as the tyre bead would have remained on the rim, rather than being forced into the well of the wheel.

However, I would still fit tubes. All my wire wheels have developed loose spikes over the years. The wire spikes are under constant tension and some will stretch. That is inevitable. That is why, each winter as part of my annual service, I check every spoke for tension, just as I did when a rode motorbikes in the days before alloy wheels. I also check the wheels for trueness (see another thread for this process). I think checking for trueness alter finding a loose spoke is essential.

I have, just once, found a broken spike. That scared me. Replacing it was simple, and I have never been able to determine why that spoke broke. The fracture was at the hub end, where spokes have a bend. I assume (hope) it was a manufacturing fault, and probably very rare.

Would I fit tubeless style wheels in future? Yes.
Would I fit tyres without a tube? No. See Dougal’s comment.