CanadianBiker32

Need some suggestions. I need a decent tire pump for all my road rides.
Something that is small size to fit in my jersey pocket easy and not bulky.
Yet good for high pressure tires and not take 30 minutes to pump my tire to 110 PSI again
Road Tires
right now i am stuck with an old school one that takes 30 minutes to pump up.

Suggestion of a good pump, price is fine, as long its portable and fits well in pocket.
Suggestions please

la rosa 

I use Silca Tattico mini pump

alcjphil

I don't understand this statement. High volume tires don't require high pressure, nowhere close to 110 psi

WhyFi

So, fits in a pocket, suitable for high volume and high pressure, and does the job quickly? I mean, I've heard about these recent discoveries that would change our perspective on physics, but I didn't realize that we were already seeing practical applications to minipumps - whoa.



Realistically, there's only so much that you can do with a pump, and reducing the size is going to limit things quite a bit more.

What's "high volume" and why do you need to get them up to 110psi? I run 28mm tires at 60psi so I had the luxury of going with an HV (high volume) Lezyne that maxes out at ~70psi, but does so in significantly fewer strokes than an HP (High Pressure) variant. Beyond manipulating the bore and the stroke, within the confines of your pocketable size restraints, there's really only a couple of functional tweaks that can be made to make things go a little more easily - maybe look in to something with a hose, fold-out foot peg and a broader handle? Something like the Road Morph or Lezyne Micro Floor Drive?

zandoval 

Messed with allot of pumps. I'm an old guy and a cheap bastard. The one pump that has always come through for me on the road in the LEZYNE. Light weight, small, fairly considerate of arthritic hands, and ya don't loose all the air removing it. Give ya enough pressure to get home.

LEZYNE is a little expense, but its a one time purchase.

I have had one so long that after 8 years of Texas heat I had to replace the "O" rings on it. No problem the "O" rings were easy to find at the auto parts store ($0.35)...

Edit: After posting I went through a review of small pumps on the current market... Looks like LEZYNE, or one of the LEZYNE knockoffs are still the best.

Ogsarg

There are lots of mini-pumps that will do the job at various prices, weights, and sizes. I use a Topeak Race Rocket HP that works OK for me and is relatively inexpensive. A small pump is going to take a lot of strokes to fill a high volume tire but you'll get there. As a reference, I figure about 150 strokes to get a 25c tire to where I can ride on it, which is probably about 70PSI.

The one recommendation I have is to get one that has a flexible hose to attach to the valve. So much easier to use than a fixed head and less risk of damaging something.

ClydeClydeson

A small pump that fits in your pocket will almost always need hundreds of pumps to inflate a tire. Many also will struggle to get up to proper road bike pressures unless you have arms like Ahhhnold Black-Ploughman. More traditional frame fit pumps, often purchased by length to match your frame size so the pump can be carried within the frame with no modifications, take fewer strokes to come to pressure and are generally more reliable at getting to higher pressure. There are also some that are mini-pumps that have a separate hose and a foot so they are used like a mini floor pump and are easier to get higher pressure.

NB... mini pumps almost always come with a frame mount that bolts under your water bottle cage. Carrying in your pocket is a pointless complication when you can leave the pump on your bike until you need it. It is a good idea to have a decent quality floor pump kept at home for regular maintenance and pumping before rides, while pumps carried on the bike should be kept for emergencies and fixing flats on the road.

Carbonfiberboy 

Topeak Road Morph G. It's smaller than a frame pump but works like a floor pump. When going to help another flatted rider, the first thing I do is grab my Road Morph (unless I see they have one). As above, a pump with a hose is a wonderful thing.

surak

Very recent thread: https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...adie-pump.html

Bearhawker

Co2?

urbanknight

Sounds like you want CO2

Eric F 

I can't remember when I last carried a pump on my road bike. Been using CO2 exclusively for road-side repairs for decades.

JohnDThompson 

As @ClydeClydeson notes, a "mini-pump" that can fit in a jersey pocket can be less than ideal. If your frame has room for it, a full-size, frame mount pump can get the job done quicker and with less effort.

urbanknight

I actually started carrying a small pump in addition to CO2 because I used both cartridges and then double flatted on the same ride, leaving me to walk the last 5 miles. Probably less of a problem now in the age of cell phone and Uber/Lyft (and that's how long it's been since that fateful day), but the habit has stuck.

79pmooney

+1 I've been using Zephal HPs and HPXs exclusively for most of 50 years. They simply work. They take 28c tires to 110 psi with probably 100 not very hard to do strokes. (In my racing days 40+ years ago, I lent my pump to a lightly built 40 something engineer to pump his tires to 120 psi for a time trial. He did it easily. (I didn't own another pump then and rode only sewups.)

All my bikes have those pumps on them. Until the day when inflation is no longer needed, I will not own a bike that cannot carry them. Of course there is one kinda sucky aspect to those pumps. If you ride with others, the day will come when they turn to you because you have the one pump/device still working.

caloso

Lezyne

Symox

I switched to CO2 years ago. I get the argument of "never running out of air" with a manual pump, but the number of pumps always was a hassle.

With CO2 I have less weight on the ride (two CO2 & inflator fits in my saddle bag) and if I get a flat the repair will be much master.

BTW, I am a fan of the preglued Park patches: easy to carry and glue tube doesn't dry out. Patch kit is tiny. I haven't been getting many flats since switching to Continental Gatorskins (knock on wood)

downhillmaster

The best posts always start with an obvious lack of any research combined with lack of using the search function.
And ofc end up with hurt feelings because what else are forums for?

Sy Reene

Not sure why, but generally all mini-pumps could be designed a bit better. That is, that if the hose didn't come out the end of the pump, but instead came out of the side of the pump, then we could all use the ground as leverage when pumping, and our body weight to help with pumping. Is there an engineering challenge that makes the hose attaching to the side an impossibility?
The referenced Topeak Morph does this, but that's a largish pump, not suited to a jersey pocket IMO (indeed looks like also requiring losing a bottle cage)

genejockey 

I have a small Lezyne - Road Drive, maybe? - that fits in a jersey pocket for my bikes that can't fit a frame pump. It takes hundreds of strokes to refill a 700 x 28 tire and bring it to rideable pressure, but it turns out to be easier than I originally expected. I tried CO2, which worked fine when I practiced it in the garage, and failed miserably on the road. Which is to say I failed miserably on the road - blew out two CO2 cylinders and had to make The Call Of Shame. Happened twice. Now I carry a pump, always.

Iride01 

Some CO2 inflators don't do what intuitively you'd think they do. Even reading the instruction can be confusing until you actually attempt to use them a few times. Then you'll usually have an "aha" moment and what they wrote will be clear as day.

On 25 mm tires, anyone should be able to get more PSI than needed from the smallest of CO2 cartridges.

As for pumps, any that can put some serious PSI into your tire will take long to fully inflate. If I wasn't going to use a frame mounted pump.. and I don't. Then I'd use CO2. A small pump that fits in your pocket might be useful for the times you are "practicing" to get better with your CO2 inflator when caught out on the road.

Unless of course you aren't in a big hurry. But the OP claims they are.

ClydeClydeson

I tried going exclusively to a CO2 inflator, but I had a very frustrating high failure rate - either the cartridge wouldn't properly seal on the inflator or the inflator wouldn't properly seal on the valve stem, and you only get one shot with each cartridge. It was probably user error but I was not willing to sacrifice any more cartridges or time or effort to get good at it.

softreset

I've had a Bontrager Air Support HP Pro S on my bike for a few years now. I've used it a half dozen times either independently or in conjunction with CO2. It fits right under my down tube water bottle cage mount and has always been more of a "peace of mind" component.

surak

That's been my experience with the Road Drive specifically and why I recommend it - compared to other mini-pumps, it is much more effective once you reach higher pressures. I have the medium size one mounted to the downtube of one of my bikes. Need an excuse to replace the other non-Road Drives I carry on my other bikes.

sfrider 

I have a side mount for the Road Morph, so it fits on the side of the seat tube rather than in front of it and won't block the bottle cage. Still have it in a bin somewhere, but it's going to be one of those things that in 5 or so years gets tossed or given away in a garage sale as "made sense at some point, but will never again be used and isn't worth warehousing".