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This may be a very stupid question, but can I get nylon valve guides for my "new style" King 2341? I bought it assuming they would be nylon, but they are in fact noisy noisy steel ones...

Thanks!

Thanks Joe. Answers my question too.

bloke wrote:(Get someone else to do this if you evaluate yourself as a "klutz". (I'm a klutz, but I just try to concentrate VERY hard...)

This is a significant improvement to the functionality and playability of this horn. Also swap out the springs for a set of coated Yamahas - quieter and faster= better!

Dan Schultz put me on to "cheese head" nylon screws for valve guides. These are now sported by my 1924 Buescher tuba and are a substantial improvement. I also have about 95 cheese head screws left over . So I'm good for a few years on the valve guide issue.

If you want to get a tap wrench instead of using the vise approach, Harbor Freight has a set of three (different sizes) that are a bit rough in terms of fit and finish, but are perfectly serviceable and quite cheap. A little work with a file or some emory paper makes these wrenches reasonably nice.

Where do you get "Cheese Head" nylon screws?

I don't recall where I got them . I remember doing a Google search. I may have got them from Ebay.

I bought a hundred for a few bucks. Send me an address and I'll drop some in the mail to you. It's helpful to have a couple of extras for the cases where you screw up while you're learning to trim them correctly. The biggest pain is shaving them down so they don't stick out too far into the guide channel. The length isn't really critical since they don't have to be very long and you can cut them shorter with a razor blade.

I also don't remember where I got the tap, but you generally can get those from auto stores (like NAPA) for as good a price as anywhere else, though they may need to order them, which takes a day or two.

I wonder if these SAE 3-48 size nylon screws could be made into valve guides for American-made tubas? No re-tapping would be necessary.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00137MV1A/ref ... B00137MV1A

bloke wrote:Art's solution is best, as long as you feel confident that you can trim that head down to the shape of a valve guide...You have 96 "practice" ones in the pkg.

By the time I got to my third valve, I had it nailed. If I had more patience I would have done a few just for practice and experimenting more with "tools" (razor blade, X-acto knife, ...). I had even bought the Ferree's little "tool" for doing these things and found it pretty useless (at least for plastic guides). Also felt really silly since I could have made it myself.

One thing I was quite careful about (more good advice from Dan) was overtightening the nylon screw and breaking its shank off in the hole.

Another issue I ran into (partly because I was dealing with an almost-100 year old instrument), was that over time the guide channels had become somewhat degraded. They were rough along their lengths, and that got cleared up with some very careful work with a fingernail emery board and some 600 and 1200 grit emery paper. More bothersome was the fact that the tops of the channels had gotten peened a bit and so were narrower than the remainder of the channel. It took be a while to see what the problem was, but it was also easily cleared up with some careful filing.

The obvious and simple solution for getting plastic valve guides in a king 2341 is to buy MAW valves....The come with plastic valve guides, all ready to go!

Art Hovey wrote:I wonder if these SAE 3-48 size nylon screws could be made into valve guides for American-made tubas? No re-tapping would be necessary.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00137MV1A/ref ... B00137MV1A

I've used these and they work OK. The Nylon is a bit 'gummy' and it's easy to twist off the threads. That's not really a big deal but does take a bit of time to dig the old threads out.

I wish someone would market these screws made out of Delrin... which is a harder material and does not absorb water. If anyone runs across some please let me know.

A dremel tool speeds up the initial trimming, and a fingernail file works well for the final fitting.

If you don't get them screwed in tight enough they tend to loosen with age, which makes insertion of the piston tricky when you do a lube job.

But if you screw them in too tightly, they break off, as Tinker has pointed out.