I haven’t seen this topic before, so if it’s out there, please let me know. I did a search and didn’t find anything, either.
Anyway, I recently converted one of my road bikes to the Clic system from presta. It seems fine, but the other day I was getting ready to ride and the front tire was flat. I use latex tubes, so I thought I’d fix the tube, but I couldn’t find the leak, even putting the tube and valve into water. So I reinstalled the tube, and pumped up the tire. The next morning, I checked the tire and it was still fine. Topped up the tire with air, rode 50 miles… No problem. Put the bike in the car and drove home. When I got home, the tire was flat. So I pumped it up again. An hour later it was flat again. Pumped it up. Next morning… the tire was fine!
The only thing I can think of is that there might be an intermittent valve leak. But it doesn’t seem to occur all the time. I’ve checked the Clic/valve stem connection and it is tight. I would think if this was a problem though, I would have lost air overnight and I didn’t. I’m thinking that perhaps some minute debris gets stuck in the valve and adding air clears it… or it can also contaminate it. And the air loss is much greater and faster than I would expect normally from latex tubes. Or maybe the valve doesn’t seat right?
Yes. That’s why I think the valves might not be quite sealing. FWIW, after I posted I found a post that mentioned that the clics might not seal properly on plastic stems. That might be it.
A little late to this discussion, but I’ve found that players valves can be a little finicky to set up with new cores (Cliks or otherwise).
The reason for this, is the relatively more pliant material giving way more easily to cross threading when installing the valve core. It might not seem like it initially, but I’ve found that you’ll need to be especially attentive to the initial insertion, to ensure that you’re threading the cores right. This minimises the chances of ruining the plastic threads that can contribute to air loss even after correcting the cross threading.
Even with new tubes coming with clikvalve preinstalled it’s worth taking a second look at the core. My friend and I both installed TPUs from Schwalbe and independently noticed that the cores were kinda loose (I tightened mine just with the fingers) @John_Tonetti: Reason we both got those new tubes: we had previously tried to convert older tubes with plastic valve stems and had similar issues like what you are describing in your question!
Thanks for this. I think I’m going to try putting some plumber’s tape around the threads. I use latex tubes and they all seem to have plastic valve stems. I use plumber’s tape on a couple of wheels that have valve extenders on them. Cheers!