Just got a new 85mm wheel. Followed the directions on attaching the Zipp valve extender. Open valve all the way, squish valve nut, apply teflon tape to the threads, screw on extender, tighten down with hex wrench. The tube will take air but as soon as I take the pump head off, air is slowly escaping. What did I do wrong?
You may have a hole in your tube or the teflon tape has shredded when you tightened down and have a leak because of it.
Teflon tape is finicky and you really need to layer it just enough that it seals the male and female sections but not enough to tear off.
The extender might be pressing against the valve nut enough to keep the valve slightly open. The teflon tape will keep the extender from leaking during pumping, but that’s it. Try pumping up the tire then unscrewing the extender (if the leak stops when you remove the extender then you know it was pressing against the nut).
The air is definitely coming from the valve. I tried pumping the tube without the extender and it leaks even when the extender is off. Also what do I need to do to get the pump to register the air pressure as its filling? The tube takes air but the register never gets above 15 psi and then go to 0.
the new vittoria extenders are the way to go, just buy removable core tubes.
Hey Roughster. What removable core tubes are you using and what length extender? I was just doing a dry run with a spare butyl tube and Zipp extender and it’s not going so well.
The Gigantex wheel is pretty sweet though.
A few months ago I had this tube that I kept slowly losing air out of. It was killing me and I couldn’t figure out why. I finally had sense enough to look at the threads on the valve stem and they had flats. It had a removeable valve core that was a wee bit loose. Problem solved.
Vittoria 40mm with 60mm QTubes Removable Valve Cores. Got both from Trisports. Doesn’t leave a ton of room to get a standard pump head on but I can get my crackpipe adapted pump on them easy and it is perfect for my CO2 app.
I’ll check them out. Thanks
It sounds like you simply have a tube with a bad valve. Try another tube. If it leaks even without the extender, the extender is not the problem.
I did and it seems to be holding. Thankfully I didn’t experiment with a latex tube for my first go at it. I’ll be using this one as my spare.