Torque Your Valve Stems
By Benjamen Johnson
Who’d a thunk it? There’s a specification for how much torque you use to tighten the valve stems on your tires. Evidently it’s even more important today because of mandatory tire-pressure monitoring systems. If you find yourself having to replace a valve stem, you might want to pick up a torque tool like one of these from KD Tools.
Use the red-handled tool to tighten lighter-grade plastic or nylon stems to 2 inch-pounds, or use the black-handled tool to tighten valve stems to the TRC1 torque specification of 4 inch-pounds.
We couldn’t find the valve-stem torque tools on the KD Tools website, but there’s no shortage of stores offering it for sale. Both torque tools come bundled together starting at $25.
KD Tools [Website]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
March 31st, 2009 at 11:16 am
Looks like that is to tighten the valve core…
March 31st, 2009 at 11:34 am
@James:
You are COMPLETELY right. For some reason, everybody who sells the KD tools call it a “Valve Stem Torque Tool Set”
I know better and should have caught it, but I must have been sleep writing or something.
March 31st, 2009 at 3:15 pm
What if you overtorque those valve cores by, say, one inch-pound (25 or 50 percent)? How many inch-pounds is “finger-tight” with a normal valve core tool? Inquiring minds want to know…
cl
March 31st, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Let’s save everyone some time here and not pretend tools like these are of any use for the average tool tinkerer out there.
I know that comment is harsh, but one of the reasons this site works well is because the posts are usually low quantity but high quality.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:43 am
I’m sorry, but if you need one of these to tell if your valve stem is tight enough, you should be inside the house watching the Hallmark channel.