I came across Clik valves while watching a 'Rides of Japan' video on YouTube. I'm not a weight weeny by any means (too much belly fat for it to be a sensible use of energy) but I find his videos entertaining. Anyway, it seems like a cute way to upgrade your valves to make attaching a pump easier and save the several seconds that it usually takes to unscrew the Presta valve top and screw on the pump head. Obviously that's not a big deal but it does add a little bit of friction to the process of getting out of the front door and onto your ride. The downside is that you have to change your pump head, either by replacing the existing one (cutting off the head of your track pump? Hmm...) or adding an adapter to your portable mini pump. I'm not sure it's worth it. What do you think?
Changing your pump/using an adaptor is a hard no from me. However nicely they work.
as an alternative, I had santa cruz fillmore valves come on my new (second hand) bike.
I wouldn't have bought these myself... but now I've used them, I'm considering getting them for the other bike.
I'm part way through a try-out of clik valves. I bought a couple of sets of stems and a pump adaptor - a fairly low cost, low hassle change to make to satisfy my curiosity.
I thought the adaptor head thing would be more faff than it is, particularly swapping between clik and presta equipped bikes. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. The ease of attaching/removing the pump from the valve is definitely an improvement on presta - just one of those little ergonomic things that makes the experience of pumping up your tyres a bit smoother. THey seem less cloggy than presta from what I can tell.
I'm not rushing to convert all the bikes in the garage, but will probably gradually swap them over as valve cores or tubes need replacing.
I wouldn't clamour to folk to rush out and get them immediately, but I would say if you're curious then it's a worthwhile experiment. It's less than £15 for some valve cores and an adaptor, so IMO cheap enough to be worth a punt to experiment. If you don't like them changing back to presta is fairly trivial.
I like them. There have been a couple of threads on this recently of which this is one:
Clik Valves – Bike Forum – Singletrack World Magazine Forum
Changing your pump/using an adaptor is a hard no from me. However nicely they work.
You can fill them with your existing Presta pump, obviously works better with a proper Clik pump or an adaptor (though it turned out when I got visited by the PF the other day that the screw-in adaptors don't work brilliantly with my Silca Tattico)
Is the "AI" forum search really that bad? (Probably!)
Is the "AI" forum search really that bad? (Probably!)
Seems to be - still end up using Google and "site:singletrackworld.com" a lot of the time.
You can fill them with your existing Presta pump, obviously works better with a proper Clik pump or an adaptor (though it turned out when I got visited by the PF the other day that the screw-in adaptors don't work brilliantly with my Silca Tattico)
good to know. otherwise this is the sort of thing that can disrupt the unspoken group ride distribution of tools and spares. one person bringing co2 and one person bringing a mini pump suddenly doesnt work if everyone is on incompatible valves.
I tried these for a punt as it was relatively cheap. No obvious benefit until I had some low tyres and I was late for the group ride - literally seconds to connect and top off both tyres without the inevitable unscrewing the whole core. So far I'm quite impressed.
I started a similar thread the other day, and yes, the Ai search (s with all seraches/layouts/general functionality on here) is unusable.
Wouldn't say Im converted, but dipped a toe with the gravel bike and they're really good, the valve cores and adapter were.omly a tenner.
Not being able to use someone else's pump is the big flaw. If they could have meshed clik with some kind of backwards compatibility, it'd be a proper winner.
I'm now learning that they work with most Presta heads, and Im far more comvinced
