dirt bike tire tubes..

[FLASHLIGHTBOY]

can anyone tell me about the lock nut on the tubes to the rim... are they suppose to be kept loose..I have been told that if I tighten them it will tear the valve stem from the tube.. is this right??/

[Weldangrind]

I snug 'em up without much torque.

[Reveeen]

Some of the tubes I have been getting lately (Michelin) don't have a threaded valve stem, but the "usual" is to snug them up.

One thing I haven't seen lately is a tire lock, usually found opposite from the valve stem (on the rim), it locked the tire to the rim. Maybe a thing of the past?

[FastDoc]

Some of the tubes I have been getting lately (Michelin) don't have a threaded valve stem, but the "usual" is to snug them up.

One thing I haven't seen lately is a tire lock, usually found opposite from the valve stem (on the rim), it locked the tire to the rim. Maybe a thing of the past?

Tire locks I think are only needed for people running hard on high performance bikes with very low pressures.

Our humble bikes, runnning dual sport pressure don't need them.

[Weldangrind]

I think that they're still quite common for the woods bike / motocross crowd, but they don't make sense for a dual sport. Tire pressure is generally higher on a DS, so a rim lock becomes redundant. IMHO, they also serve to unbalance a wheel at high speed.

On my XR, I tighten the rim lock securely. I don't want to spin the rim inside the tire (like what happened to my son).

[FLASHLIGHTBOY]

Thanks for the info.. I had a friend go thru a couple of tubes.. ripped the valve stem right off of the tube.. I do not know what he did.. tighten them or left them too loose.. you never get the whole story.. but I will just snug them up alittle thanks everyone..

[Weldangrind]

When my son ripped the valve stem off, he was riding a bike with no rim lock, low air pressure and very low gearing. The fix was to install a rim lock from an RM80 (since it was only a 14" rear rim) and increase the pressure to 15psi.