A New Kind of Bike Valve?

If you’ve worked on a high-end mountain or road bike for any length of time, you have likely cursed the Presta valve. This humble century-old invention is the bane of many a home and professional mechanic. What if there is a better option? [Seth] decided to find out by putting four valves on a single rim.

The contenders include the aforementioned Presta, as well as Schrader, Dunlop and the young gun, Click. Schrader and Dunlop both pre-date Presta, with Schrader finding prevalence in cruiser bicycles along with cars and even aircraft. Dunlop is still found on bicycles in parts of Asia and Europe. Then came along Presta some time around 1893, and was designed to hold higher pressures and be lower profile then Schrader and Dunlop. It found prevalence among the weight conscious and narrow rimmed road bike world and, for better or worse, stuck around ever since.

But there’s a new contender from industry legend Schwalbe called Click. Click comes with a wealth of nifty modern engineering tricks including its party piece, and namesake, of a clicking mechanical locking system, no lever, no screw attachment. Click also fits into a Presta valve core and works on most Presta pumps. Yet, it remains to be seen whether Click is just another doomed standard, or the solution to many a cyclists greatest headache.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen clever engineering going into a bike valve.