What are Schrader Valves, and why they are so crucial to your car.

23 Oct 2018

Schrader valves are a type of pneumatic air valve designed by August Schrader in 1891 in America. Schrader valves are found on every automobile in the world, so why are they so important?

Tires are obviously the most important part of any car. Keeping your butt safely glued to the road at all times. Tires hold air and other gasses, Schrader valves keep those gasses in safely and very effectively. All Schrader valves have threads holding them in their metal tube housing with a spring. Putting air in your tire seems quite easy, mostly because these valves are doing all the work for you. So how do they work?

How they work is quite ingenious and amazing. I’ll try to explain the best I can. Inside the little metal tube I mentioned before is a spring. This spring can only be actuated vertically in via a pin. Once pressure is applied to the pin, the spring moves down, and the multiple gaskets inside the valve open up. This gives Schrader valves the distinct two way feature of letting air in and out of a tire or whatever it is connected to. Air pumps you use to put air in your tires are designed to push the pin connected to the spring inside the valve vertically in while locking at the same time. This allows you to put air in your tires, while the valve dose all the work keeping the air inside the tire once you remove the pump. This is because the spring moves back to the closed position once the pin inside the air pump is removed.

So without these little mechanisms we would not be able to keep air in our tires. Which means we can’t drive, or go to car meets, or pick up the kids, or drive to your auto parts store. They are a very cool little invention that really did change the face of the auto world when they were invented. Before Schrader valves, cars had solid rubber tires. Before solid rubber tires, tires were wrapped in leather, and before that I don’t know what we had, walking I guess?

Thanks for reading. I plan to write much more now, I have a new computer for it. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! I would love to hear topic ideas and stuff for future blogs that I will write.