If my recent experience is any indication, tubes with offset stems for
4.50 x 19 tires are scarcer than hen's teeth, expensive, and likely to become
more so in the future.
I did finally locate a U.S. source, offering them at a relatively
affordable price of $16.95 (US) each, plus shipping.
The source is:
Wallace W. Wade Specialty Tires
P.O. Box 560906 Dallas, Texas 75247.
'Phone: (214) 688-0091 or toll-free (800) 666-8973
Mr. Wade is extremely knowledgeable, cooperative, prompt, and a real
pleasure to do business with. (I ordered 5 tubes; they arrived only two days
later!)
That's the good news; the not-so-good news is that he now has only 10 of
these tubes in stock. However, he said he'll be getting more when they're
gone.
For those of you who don't already know it, the TC has its valve stem
hole offset from the centerline of the rim, rather than the more common
centered hole. (I assume that the TA and TB also need an offset stem, but
I'm not sure of this.) If one uses a tube with a centerline stem on a TC,
the tube fails at the stem after only a short time in use.
It seems that the need for an offset stem makes the proper tubes hard to
find, but centerline stems are easy, which brings me to my thought of closing
off the offstet stem hole (by welding/brazing), and drilling a new hole on
the rim's centerline, thus allowing the use of the readily-available
centered-stem tubes . Does anyone see a problem with this approach?
Regards,
Carl Fritz
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