Tube in a singletube tire?

[Andrew Gorman]

I'm looking at a leaky and crispy singletube tire and thinking that it might be possible to add an innertube.
In its current condition, the outer casing is still pliable, but interior layers are dried, cracked and leaking air from every pore. The quick fix would be to make a small cut on the rim side, shake out the debris, and thread a tube cut in half through the tire, then patch the tube like a worm's clitellum. Not really optimal, but it should hold air and be ride-able with care. The cadillac job would be to peel back the base tape and slice the whole carcass open treating it as a sew-up tire. A lot of hand sewing, but I don't see any reasons it wouldn't work.
Has anyone tried this?
See any reasons why it just won't work?
Have any other ideas?
Thanks in advance!

 

[JOEL]

In an old Mead catalog, I saw an inner tube to repair single tube tires. It was a linear tube with a valve in the center. I guess you would just make a slit where the valve is, work the tube in, and sew it back up.

Could possibly cut a tube and seal up the ends somehow??

 

[Gordon]

Single tube tube

When I was a kid (long time ago), I got a little home made boat. It was very tippy, so my Dad took two balloon tire bike tubes and cut them in one spot and took them to the tire recapping store. They vulcanized the ends of the tubes shut, and we fastened them to the sides of the boat and blew them up to about 6 inches in diameter. It made the boat very stable. So, if you can find a tire store that still does recapping, you can probably get them to help you make a long snake of a tire tube.

 

[Andrew Gorman]

A long strip of tube should be easier to make than the splice I was thinking of, and would save a lot of stitching! I'm not sure if the butyl rubber used in modern inner tubes needs vulcanizing, but you should be able to clamp the ends of a cut tube for a good bond. The belt and suspenders approach would be to add a strip or two of patch material at right angles to the cut. At the very least this will pump up the tires for display a lot better than the usual flattened fossilized tires, and may even be ride-able. I'll be trying this on my one singletube tire at my current glacial pace of hobby work. Thanks for the suggestions, and there may be others in depression era Popular Mechanics/Mechanix Illustrated/ etc.
The tire I'm working with is shot by any conventional standards- pumping it up in the bathtub shows 9 areas of leaks up to 6 inches long after 2 strokes of the floor pump, with more appearing after a couple more. I don't think slime would save this tire, but the outer casing seems to be in good shape. Thanks again!

 

[JOEL]

I've heard stories from a lot of old timers about filling tires with dirt, leaves, cotton seed, ect.

 

[Adamtinkerer]

I've heard of people using fix a flat on them. May have to try that on my Rollfast's Chain 28"ers. ~Adam

 

[Andrew Gorman]

Fix-a-Flat works pretty well on my commuter bike, as long as the holes are small. Slime or something similar would probably work better on larger holes. I guess it's an improved version of the "tire fluid" sold in the 1920's

 

[pelletman]

You're probably better off just buying a new tire for 100 from Harper Machine