Originally Posted by
Arthur Peabody
Air has particles in it that accumulate. I have taken apart pumps and cleaned them. I have also replaced a rubber o-ring in a frame-type pump with a stock part from the hardware store.
No. While air can have particulates, they are on the order of 10µg/cubic meter or 1/100,000th of a gram/ cubic meter. Assuming about 150mL per tire at 100psi, that about a liter of air at atmosphic pressure or about 0.01µg/tire. To get a gram of particulates into the pump, ten million tires would have to be pressurized.
A seal fail on the plunger also wouldn’t result in the problem Altair 4* describes. Plunger seal failures would result in no resistance at the handle during pumping because the air column being compressed would leak past the seal. The squeal he describes is probably air being forced past the seal as the pressure increases in the tube due to the failed (or failing) check valve but the seal isn’t the problem.
*Now I get it. Do you want to be Captain Adams, Morbius, or Robby?