Review – Topeak Presta Valve Extender

There may come an occasion where the inner tubes that you are using do not have a valve long enough for your deep section rims. On these occasions you can purchase inner tubes with longer valve stems or you can purchase a valve extender.

In this review I will look at the Topeak Presta valve extender for Presta valves without a removable core (See Figure 1 below). If you are new to my review methodology please read my article (here) that explains how I conduct my reviews and score the products that I review.

Figure 1

Setup

For this review I used the Topeak Presta valve extender with Vitoria inner tubes with non-removable cores, Vitoria Rubino tires, and Zipp 303 NSWs. The Vitoria inner tubes that I used for this review come with a standard length Presta valve with non-removable core which is too short for the Zipp 303 NSW 45mm rim depth as you can below in figure 2.

Figure 2

Installation

I installed the Topeak Presta valve extender by screwing the extender directly onto the Presta valve. The extension gave plenty of room above my rim (See Figure 3 below).

Figure 3

The instructions, found on the Topeak’s website (here for the standard length and here for the XL length) and located in the packaging, were easy to follow. The Topeak Presta valve extender screwed easily onto my Presta valve and fit the hole in the Zipp 303 NSW rim just fine.

Usage

Overall I found that using the Topeak Presta valve extender was not difficult. When using the Topeak Presta valve extender valve lock to open and close the air valve on my Presta valve, it worked very well. I did notice that sometimes I had to put a little bit of downward pressure on the valve lock for it to grab my Presta valve lock underneath; but, I do not think this is an issue. However, I did have some minor challenges placing my pump nozzle onto the Topeak Presta valve extender and locking it to the Topeak Presta valve extender. And, I had similar issues when removing my pump nozzle from the Topeak Presta valve extender. Locking and unlocking the pump nozzle was challenging due to the length of the Topeak Presta valve extender and how high above the rim it extended. This caused the Topeak Presta valve extender shaft to be wobbly as you place or remove the pump nozzle from the Topeak Presta valve extender. With a deeper rim this most likely would not have been a problem; but, this was the smallest valve extender that Topeak offered. The other issue I noticed is due to what I consider a design flaw which I discuss in the next section; however, you will want to be careful seating your pump nozzle onto the Topeak Presta valve extender and have a firm grip on the Topeak Presta valve extender when you remove your pump nozzle.

Quality

Typically you can expect good design and quality from Topeak; however, in this instance they did not meet with their usual high quality. On the Topeak website is states that these Topeak Presta valve extenders are “Precision machined from aircraft grade aluminum…” That appears to be true to a point. While the outer casing and the valve lock nut appear to be made from aluminum and of good quality, the inner part that screws onto the Presta valve is made of plastic. It was nearly impossible to get a good photo of this but you should be able to see the issue in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4

If you look closely at Figure 4, you can see the darker color of the outer aluminum wall and the lighter color of the inner plastic. Since you are screwing grooved plastic onto a metal grooved valve, you can imagine that the plastic will not last long. In fact, in my testing I noticed after a few uses that one of the valves seemed to be leaking. Upon removing the Topeak Presta valve extender to determine what the issue was, the grooved plastic fell out of the aluminum shaft. I was unable to reseat the plastic insert and get the Topeak Presta valve extender to work after this happened. A second Topeak Presta valve extender that was purchased at the same time has not yet had this problem although I have now been extremely careful when installing or removing the Topeak Presta valve extender and installing or removing the pump nozzle from the valve extender. Based upon this experience and how this product is designed, I have to give this product a low mark for design and quality which is unusual for a Topeak product.

Cost

The cost for this product is average for this type of product. At the time this article was written I found the smaller version of the Topeak Presta valve extender at: Performance Bicycle listed (here) for $5.99, Chain Reaction Cycles listed (here) for $6.95, and at Amazon Prime (here) for $6.49.

Summary

In summary, for Installation I give it five out of five Stars; for Usage I give it four out of five Stars, for Quality I give it two out of five Stars, and for Cost I give it four out of five Stars. This is not the most expensive product in this range nor is it the cheapest; but, for the price, and considering the manufacturer, I expected a better product. In conclusion, given my experiences with the quality, I cannot recommend this product at this time.    

If you like this post or find it useful, please give it  thumbs up and/or a comment in the comment section below.