Ages ago I must have over-tightened the twist-lock mouth inflation valve cap on my Yak, probably ham-fisted ahead of a tense crossing. Actually it’s not so hard to do to the cheapo plasticy valves. And once you’ve gone too far and rounded the threads, the valve will only seal in the exact right position and with less tension than normal.
With a trip coming up, I set about replacing the black valve cap, but for the life of me could not locate one on the web in the UK, googling every permutation of ‘twist, lok/lock, valve, cap’. Fancier oral inflation valves exist for scuba BCDs but I wanted to keep it simple.
Trying to order from the US came up with $50+ postage for a 50-cent part. It gets even more fascinating but, to cut a long story short, eventually Supai Adventure Gear (there ultralight packraft previewed here) sent me eight valves for $12. And then Alpacka unexpectedly replied and sent me a couple of theirs for free.
I thought just the softer plastic twist cap could be yanked off the white threaded section and replaced, but the blue cap Supais came threaded to the white bit, so perhaps caps and threaded sections are a unit and separating them pre-damages the threads. Don’t want that so the old valve needs to be cut off the red inflation tube.
Still here? Turns out the Supai valve has a bigger bore than my 2011 Yak valve but when trying to over-tighten a Supai valve as a test, I couldn’t manage it with my bare hands so it seems to be better than what came with my Yak in 2011. Looking closely it’s hard to see much difference in the design or materials, but even though the diameter is about 2mm more than the Alpacka valve, with a bit of glue as lube, it slips easily enough into the cut off red tube end.
Moral of the story: if you need to replace your thread-damaged Alpacka inflation valve you’ll need to cut the old one off and may prefer to replace it with a blue Supai unit (unless Alpackas have changed in the last couple of years).
In North America you can but these valves for a $1 or so from Advanced Elements, Feathercraft, NRS, Alpacka and Supai. The inflatable seats on my old Incept from NZ also had them, and iirc they were notably chunky. I’ve since learned that the Packrafting Store in Germany can sell you a twist valve for an Alpacka or a Supai.
