The Camaro Club (UK)

It's an odd one this, but does anyone know of a decent manufacturer of foot pumps? I've gotten tired of them breaking. I recently had to make 1 good one out of 3 bad ones. They're made so cheap. I had one (Draper) with a manifold that was burning hot after about 20 seconds and crumbled where the air screw attaches. We've gone through countless ones over the years and reading reviews online, that seems to be the norm. I've started looking at bike pumps (the big floor standing ones not the hand held ones) for mountain bikes as they are designed for higher volume lower pressure (75psi) and appear to have a similar barrel diameter but a longer throw than foot pumps. Wondered if there are any decent pumps out there, short of using compressed air?

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Gave up on footpumps after many hours of research trying to find something that had decent ratings. Most have 2-3 star ratings and based on reviews don't usually last very last long. There's a gap in the market for a well engineered pump - it's usually the cheap plastic hose attachments that leak and break, or the cast manifold that cracks, or the thin metal pump tube.

Randomly on a forum someone mentioned stirrup pumps so started looking into those (old fashioned vertical style) and came across bicycle ones (not the hand types but upright floor ones). Bikes normally run high pressure (120 psi) and low volume (skinny tyres), so looked into a mountain bike pump which is lower pressure (75 psi) and higher volume (fatter tyres) so has a wider cylinder. I found one by a company called Topeak who are quite well rated in the bike world and went for the Joe Blow Mountain model. Not too cheap at £25 but i've spent more than that on foot pumps in the last few years.

I was a bit worried as people were saying these pumps would take ages to pump a car tyre due to the size, but was pleasantly surprised. The cylinder is the same diameter as a foot pump but has a very long throw (over 1 foot vs. a few inches) so it pumped a lot faster than a foot pump. It took a 255 60 15 tyre from 15 psi to 30psi in less than 2 minutes which is a lot of tyre to fill. The foot pump took way longer and due to the short throw, broke a sweat due to many pumps of the pedal needed (this high repetition use is probably what aids in early failure of the parts).

It should (fingers crossed) last longer than a foot pump as there are less moving parts and angles involved. The valve attachment didn't leak which was a welcome change too.

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

How to post youtube vids: Click on the 'youtubeHD' button at the top of the message box and in the middle of the ][ brackets that just appeared, copy and paste everything from the youtube web address that appears after the = sign i.e if this is the url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0 just copy "K2cNqaPSHv0").

Would you not be better off with adjust plug in 12v lighter powered compressor. they're only about a tenner from petrol stations... I bought a good Michelin one from Halfords years ago that was really good, but the display broke (compressor still works)

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