At 11:57 AM 12/3/03 -0500, Dave Ahrendt wrote:
>"On the Heritage Certificate I got for my '59 MGA 1500 it says that it was equipped with tubeless tires as optional equipment. There is no mention of special wheels. It doesn't appear that the wheels I currently have on the car are safety rims but I have no way to know if they are original to the car. Oh yeah, these are steel wheels not wire wheels I'm talking about.
>
>Was there a safety rim available as optional equipment in 59 or had the factory determined that you could run tubeless on the standard rim? ...."

Tubless tires work fine on the original MGA steel rims. As far as I know my 58 has been running tubless since new, now with 335,000 miles and no incident, including LOTS of seroius autocrossing on race tires. I crack steel wheels from the added stress of the race tires, but they don't lose air.

Safety rims may be an advantage for people who insist on ignoring their tires and run around with very low air pressure. Even then, the safety rim should only come into play if you try to run flat with no pressure. The safety rim is designed to hold the tire bead in place on the rim in the absence of pressure. With normal pressure in a tubless tire, a standard rim (not safety rim) will hold the tire securely. So you need not worry about this, as long as you maintain reasonable tire pressure, and don't try to run any distance on a flat tire.

   
Standard "J" style wheel rim for MGA     Safety rim with groove for tire bead.