Anyone got a good tip, the wheels and tyres I bought had some very nice metal valve caps on but they wont shift to pump the tyres up. They even have a hex head on them but they won't budge.
Any tips before I attack them with a dremel and a cutting disk?

Mike

Have you tried a set of mole grips or large pliers to loosen them?

I guess new valves are cheap enough, but the risk of damage seems high if resorting to cutting them off.

little heat (hot air gun..) would be my first attempt.

Some have small allen grub screws holding them in.



[Edited on 8-9-16 by loggyboy]

quote:

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Originally posted by loggyboy
Some have small allen grub screws holding them in.



[Edited on 8-9-16 by loggyboy]

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I suspect you pay handsomely for BMW "M" valve caps so why not pay a little more and have grub screws. What a bugger if you lost the Allen key

A little heat may work but metal valve caps are a real pain and you end up cutting them off .

Metal valves are the work of satan. They just corrode solid. My Ickle fiesta ST came from the dealer with stainless valves which are now starting to cause corrosion on the alloys themselves. Went to see ford the other day and they said I shouldn't have fitted metal valves. They didn't know where to look when I said you sold them to me like that.

When you do get them off swap them back to plastic asap.

I had this they were a free set (made of aluminium) from a body shop mole grips, heat, WD40, plus-gas and no amount of foul language would shift them took wheels off the car and to a tyre place replace all 4 valves and used plastic caps ever since.

[Edited on 8/9/16 by shindha]

[Edited on 8/9/16 by shindha]

Plastic have always worked fine for me on cars, bicycles etc. "if it aint broke don't fix it".

I had this on my car i carefully filed one side and split the caps off i had to do all 4 caps
stop filing when you see the brass tread showing
jacko

Seen it loads of times on cars equipped with tyre pressure monitoring systems where the valves have a sensor built in , some cost upwards of £50 a time

What you need guys is a little lubrication....
A dab of clear grease or even delicately applied copper grease

get the missus to take 'em off

Kettles of boiling water and gently nip the caps from all three directions. Plenty of patience and they'll come off.

Mike

I hope you've managed to remove the caps!

If you want some I have some spare plastic caps in my tool box and given a postal address would let you have them for free


ETA...they're not fancy schmancy "M" caps, just plain black ones - hope that's not an issue for you.


[Edited on 9/9/16 by nick205]

Mole grips on the valve body and a spanner on the cap. It doesn't matter if you mash the valve body up as they're useless as it is anyway.

When you put them back on, use some grease.

encouraging to hear I'm not the only one to have experienced this!

I carefully took a junior hacksaw to the caps until I was able to split them. Bit awkward around alloys but worked.

A dremmel would also work but you'd want to take it slowly.

I really didn't want to damage the valves when I did this as I discovered 3 out of 4 caps had corroded on after a period of particularly bad weather when I was doing my final checkover of the car the night before a drive to the alps!

Any more cars that come with daft metal caps will be switched to plastic in the future!

Does anyone remember the metal Schrader caps that had a 'key' on the top so you could remove the valve cores? They used to make a plain topped version too, I never had either of these seize in place. Maybe that was just down to the plating they used?

They were/are brass. I still have a few kicking about.

Yeah had this with bling metal caps, corroded onto the valve thread so bad the valve tore off! Never used metal ones again after that.