I have a few of these valve stem covers I'd like to use, but only this one nut. A lot of the catalogues fall short in the illustration department, but as near as I can tell it's not available from any of the usual suspects. Anybody know a source?
The (pressed) nut screws onto the metal valve stem, then the cover screws onto the stem and sits on top of the nut. The cover does not screw onto the nut.
Bill Barth.
Steve, if the cover does not screw onto the nut, then the nut is most likely the one which tightens the bridge piece on the metal stemmed valves where they go in the tube.
If it threads onto the stem the same as the cover, it would allow the cover to jam up tight to it to stop it coming loose, but then it would make it hard to remove the cover to inflate the tyre without it winding off too. Who knows?
Allan from down under.
Allan,two things argue against that. 1 The nut holding the bridge washer needs to be sturdier than this; 2 The recessed area on top of this pressed nut is a perfect fit for the cover.
Steve, what is the thread in that nut? Would it be possible to make by cutting down some standard nut? Or perhaps make it outright from a piece of hex stock? Bob
Looks like 31/64 with a pitch of 27. Maybe I could make them if I had the right tools, but I hope I'll hear back from Bill Barth that he has them and I can spend my time on other things.
Yeah, buy 'em if you can. That thread size and pitch will be tough to duplicate. Bob
I think I have an article coming out in the Model T Times soon on valve stems. What you have pictured is most likely a felloe nut for the larger diameter valve stem, which you don't want to use. The nut pictured doesn't need the usual felloe nut, but rather you simply screw the dust cover down to it. It adds a lot of extra weight to the wheel, and of course will throw your wheel out of balance, even more that the standard T valve stems. The current tubes, with valves vulcanized to them would use the nut that you have pictured, but are NOT correct for a Model T.
Here is a later style fellow nut.
I used those on my 1915-16 Oakland to hold the five-hole lock plate to the Baker split rim (33 x 4 tires). The valve stem (a larger diameter than the Model T valve stems) went through the center hole of the lock plate. The other four holes fit over bullet shaped pins on the inside of the rim. Since there was no way to hold the lock plate onto the rim without something like that, I figured that it is what those were used for. The lock plate will not come off when the rim is mounted on the wheel but it could fall off when it was used on a "spare tire" without such a nut. On the ones I have, the back side has a leather washer, presumably to act as somewhat of a "lock" to keep them from rattling off. I would take a photo but all I have are mounted on the car right now and don't have a spare yet. If the nut you have will screw on a small brass valve stem (Model T size) it may have been for keeping the stem from falling back into the tire of a demountable rim when using it as a spare.
Verne
Under the FWIW category,
I had something similar in the past and for whatever reason, the threads on the nut and the metal valve stem threads were different. I looked high and low to no avail, and finally just drilled out the nuts until there was but ONE thread remaining, and just pulled them down snug...
No problems, no walk-off, and since there is about 100 thread engagement by the covers ( ) no worries either.