Inner tubes have been used inside pneumatic tyres since the dawn of motoring, and decades later when radial ply tyres got invented, radials were also fitted with inner tubes. By the early 1950's there was a marketing drive to find ways to fit tyres without inner tubes, but realistically nothing much happened. This tubeless idea had become a possibility with the invention of the material Butyl by scientists at Standard Oil in the USA, towards the end of the war in 1943. Dunlop for example claimed they were working on this from the late 1940's and I am aware that for 1957 Dunlop did market a tubeless car tyre which they claimed had just "a slow rate of air loss", for fitting to normal car rims of up to 16 inch diameter, and they dedicated 8 pages in a pamphlet to the extra care needed, the difficulty in fitting and the different methods of doing this to get bead sealing, finally with the whole tyre assembly needing to be placed in a bath of water to check for leaks at the bead area, and so on.

Observing original wheels that come into Blockley Tyre Co. for fitting and balancing, we have deduced that by around 1968 some wheel rim makers had started to modify their rims with the addition of safety ridges to the rim, enabling tubeless tyres to be fitted safely i.e. a new tubeless compatible wheel rim. This new style of rim had a ridge on each side for the tyre bead to pop over so the bead would be held rigidly in place, designed specifically for radial ply tubeless tyres, and we start seeing this type wheel with the original Mercedes and Porsche wheels that come in to our shop. But this isn't across the board - even Alfa Romeos from the early 1970's were still using the tube type rims. And unlike the Europeans, the Brits were a bit more conservative and car manufacturers kept with cross ply tyres (and therefore tube type wheels) well into the 1970's, even though they often offered a radial tyre option, so the British motor industry lagged behind in adopting the wheel rims with safety ridges that allow for tubeless tyres to be fitted without having inner tubes in them.

So when should inner tubes be used? Unfortunately to answer this we have a bit more of a history lesson!

All cross ply type tyres need to be fitted with inner tubes, and in any case all cross ply tyres made today are "tube type" anyway, which have to be fitted with inner tubes irrespective of what wheels they are being fitted to. If you don't fit tubes, the air inside will gradually leak out through the sidewalls and after a few days (or a week at most) you will have a flat tyre. The same applies to the earlier radial ply tyres which were made at a time when all tyres were also fitted with inner tubes, which is why for example the Blockley 165HR400 radial tyre needs to be fitted with inner tubes, as per original specification. Then there are Classic car radial tyres such as the Michelin X range which all need to be fitted with tubes (the tyre will also have "tube type" written on the sidewall presumably). Then there are also some radial off road tyres that are tube type, for reasons we can go into later. Other than that, all radial tyres made today are "tubeless type" which means they will hold air without an inner tube fitted inside.

Which means you do not have to fit an inner tube into a radial tubeless type tyre, PROVIDING THAT they are being fitted to tubeless compatible rims! So as an example, if you fitted tubeless type tyres to an original wire wheel, the air would leak past the spoke heads so of course you have to fit an inner tube to keep the pressure in - irrespective of whether the tyre is tube type or tubeless type! Often the problem with a modern tyre fitting shop is that if a tyre has "Tubeless Type" written on the sidewall they vehemently insist it cannot be fitted with inner tubes," Tubeless tyres damage the tube, mate" and all the rest of it - and although well meaning, they are wrong. Also you might be surprised at how many tyre shops don’t know how to fit a tube in a tyre anyway!

So it is fairly obvious that you have to fit an inner tube when fitting any tyre to an original wire wheel, but what about the ordinary steel (or occasionally alloy) wheels that are original equipment on a classic car? As a rule of thumb, you would fit an inner tube when fitting any type of tyre (tube type or tubeless type) to a conventional wheel rim, and not fit a tube if the wheel rim is the later design type i.e. which has the safety ridges. Note that some examples of tubeless type rims only had one safety ridge. The reason for this is that with the earlier tube type rim if you curbed your tyre this could push the tyre inward, so if you didn’t have a tube fitted there would be an instant deflation, whereas if you had a tube fitted you would be carrying on. That is the only reason for having the tube in the tube type rim when fitting a radial ply tubeless tyre. Hopefully that all seems fairly straightforward and sensible, but there is just a little more to think about.

Another factor to consider is that as time has moved on the inner tubes available for Classic cars has become particularly garbage like in quality, and really quite shocking in some cases, even sold through the Classic tyre wholesalers, so trying to rely on this dross to hold air while in use is just guaranteeing a miserable outcome, especially for those that give their cars some use - understand and wake up to the fact that inner tubes for "Classic Cars" (and the tyres for that matter) are made for the benefit of the classic tyre wholesalers selling them, rather than for the benefit of the people paying for them. Don't be taken in by all that corporate talk of their devotion to excellence and how much they love you. So on that basis, bearing the quality and dimensional issues in mind, although you should be using inner tubes in the situation they should be used in, you are actually better off running without them, and many don't! And that is why we make our own Blockley Superior range of inner tubes that are sized correctly (the size they fit is written on the tyre, not some code), super thick as they should be and made from the best material butyl, and so on, which means if you want to use inner tubes in a correct inner tube situation, you can use the Blockley tubes we make with confidence. We use our Blockley tyres and tubes ourselves, and make tubes to supply with the tyres we make, so our customers (many of whom we know) can have a trouble free experience, as far as the tyres and tubes are concerned. An interesting point is that there is no rule or law that we are aware of that says you must use inner tubes when fitting to a tube type wheel rim when using a radial tubeless type tyre, for safety, because as recounted above when tubeless type tyres were first introduced in the 1950's the rims were these same "tube type" design, so there is precedent. 

So to recap on all of this; Blockley recommends that you ought to fit Blockley inner tubes when fitting radial tubeless tyres to tube type rims (i.e. those rims without the safety ridges) and no need to use inner if the rims have the safety ridges. Sometimes you'll find some older alloy wheels on cars such as Maseratis or Alfas (especially if magnesium) have a tendency to be porous, and in these situations you can fit inner tubes, and many do. But when wanting to fit tubes to more modern tyres with leaky rims, remember that you cannot fit a tube in a tyre size less than seventy  (/70) profile, one reason being that no tubes exist with dimensions for these lower profile tyres.

Mention should now be made of the vast range of wire wheels supplied by MWS (Motor Wheel Services) for Classic car owners, which they have done for many decades. Over a period of time MWS converted many of their wire wheels to be tubeless compatible, which was done with the addition of the safety ridges and covering the wheel well (and thus the spoke heads) with an air tight material. So these MWS wire wheels can be fitted with radial ply tubeless tyres without the need for inner tubes, as stated by the manufacturer. The MWS website details all of their wheels and at what date each size became tubeless type, but if unsure we can tell you if they are tube or tubeless type if you send in a picture of your wheel. It may be possible that after a number of tyre fittings that the rubber bead covering the spokes could get damaged and leak, but this would be a rare event if fittings are done by a competent fitter. In the rare occasion that this might have happened a tube can be used. We have fitted many thousands of MWS wheels over the years at Blockley and have never came across a problem. One of the larger classic tyre wholesalers is insistent that all wire wheels, including the MWS tubeless wheels, must all be fitted with inner tubes, but then their reason for existence is to sell stuff, which includes inner tubes, whether the customer needs them or not.