Tips on using and maintaining your tyre deflator

Tips to use, service and modify your Badger Rapid Tyre Deflator

How to fix your Badger Rapid Tyre deflator if it becomes sticky and hard to operate?

The Badger Tyre Deflator has a stainless steel pin and a brass sleeve. It uses normal o-rings to seal the pin and tube. If you used your rapid tyre deflator for some time it will become a bit stiff and not easy to turn. That is because the oil layer on the components gets sticky after some time.

The best way to solve this problem is to spray it with spookpis. Something like Q20 or Indy Oil PR-8 will do the trick. You can spray some of this penetrating oil on the components and then wipe it in order to get rid of the sticky dirt.

Then spray some more penetrating oil and just wipe it off lightly with a cloth. If it gets sticky again just add a thin layer of penetrating oil. If the tyre deflator becomes sticky while you are in the bush, pull out the dipstick of your vehicle’s engine and use a drop of engine oil.

Below is a picture of a dirty tyre deflator. A client actually sent this back and said his deflator is not working no more. In fact all it needed was some cleaning.

How to fix your Badger Tyre Deflator if it starts leaking

Because the deflator uses normal rubber o-rings to seal, it will at some stage start leaking once the o-rings are worn out. Especially if the deflator are not lubricated often enough.

You can easily disassemble the deflator and replace the o-rings. See the pictures below:

Badger tyre deflator service — Remove the clip

Service your badger tyre deflator — Remove sleeve from slider

Replace o-ring on Badger tyre deflator — Remove and replace o-ring

How to Turbo Boost your Deflator

To you want to add some more woema to your deflator?

It is easy. There are two ways;

Increase the size of the deflating hle to 3.5mm
Drill an extra set of 3mm holes 90 degrees to the existing holes.

Notes: Do not exceed 3.5mm and remember to ream the holes after you drilled them in order to get rid of the sharp edges. You can use a 5mm drill to ream the edges.

See pics below to see how and where to drill extra holes in your deflator:

Increase performance of Badger Tyre deflator — Drill extra 3mm hole in your tyre deflator

Faster tyre deflator — Extra hole drilled and reamed

What if your rapid tyre deflator do not seal properly?

The Badger tyre deflator works best on standard rims with standard rubber valves.

Some mag rims with metal valves (especially TPMS metal valves) are problematic because the metal valves are shorter than the standard valves. Because the valve is shorter, the slider of the tyre defltor cannot move forward enough in order to seal the holes of the deflator.

The only way to fix this is to file off about 2mm of the bottom end of the slider.