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Old August 9th 03, 03:25 PM
Alex Rodriguez
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Default Disappointing (was Recommended high-volume floor-type bicycle pumps?)

In article ,
says...

When I started this thread asking about floor-type bicycle pumps, I
was hoping to get good consumer-related information so I know what's
out there, and which floor-type air pumps are rated the best by actual
comparison with one another (the only way to know the better ones from
the worse ones is by actual comparison between them!)

Considering how ubiquitous floor-type bicycle pumps are, and the
importance they are to the bicycle enthusaist, it surprises me that no
recent article in a bicycle magazine (or Consumer Reports as a matter
of fact) has appeared doing an *exhaustive* comparison of floor-type
bicycle pumps. In fact, I find this lack of information outright
strange.

Here's are some of the things the comparison would assess:

1) Number of pumps and the force needed to fill up a lower pressure
tire (e.g., mountain bike, automobile), and number of pumps and
overall effort to fill a tire up to very high pressure.

2) Overall assessment of durability and reliability (e.g., does it use
cheap, flimsy plastic parts, or high quality parts?)

3) Assessment of ergonomics.

4) Quality, accuracy and precision of built-in pressure gauge.

5) Cost

6) Warranty, parts availability, and repairability.

Considering how inexpensive these pumps are (in the cosmic scheme of
things), a bicycle magazine could certainly do this comparitive study
quite easily and inexpensively. In so doing, it will accelerate the
improvement of these air pumps by forcing companies to try to outdo
one another to build a better air pump.

Now, with what little information I could find, the bicycle pump that
seems to be the "current reference standard" for floor-type air pumps
is the Blackburn TP-5:

http://www.blackburndesign.com/WEBREADY/03teampump.html

It is a clever design in that it has two settings: very high volume
for low pressure filling (such as automobile and mountain bike tires),
and a low volume, high pressure setting. Thus, when filling up a tire,
one can start out at high volume and put a lot of air in to start out
with, and then once the pressure builds up where pumping gets
difficult, one switches to the high pressure setting -- it fills up
much more slowly, but it takes a lot less force to achieve very high
pressures. Quite clever, actually.


In the modern internet world we have all forgotten that there are public
libraries that have quite a bit of information that is not available online.
I recall one of the bicycle magazines did a test of pumps as you describe
above. You should be able to find out which magazine at your local library.
I think it was Bicycle Guide or Bicycling. I was a bit surprised because
the magazine usually printed a lot of useless cliche ridden reviews.
--------------
Alex



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