Tyre pressure gauge

[tyreon]

Once-upon-a-time I had a SKS steel barrelled track pump. It and its gauge worked fine. Then I found myself with other bikes having schraeder valves. All went well until it didnt. After the pump valve head wore out I bought another with a valve head that promised the adapter would work between schraeder and presta. But it never did. That,or it was me! I still keep and use the SKS for my presta valved tyres but not for schrader,story 293 pages long.

I then bought a  Zefal steel barrelled pump with magnified gauge to use on my schrader valve bicycles. Still,what is going on? Altho my sight is ailing,by the time I look to see the needle on the gauge to rate the tyre pressure,by the time I have registered to needle and bar pressure the needle has fallen back to a tyre pressure I know it cannot be. Thus,wanting a bar of say 5,the pressure is 2 then up to 7 before falling back to say 3. There seems to be no stability wherein I can gauge the reading. The needle on the gauge seems to appear to be very fickle and indeterminate in its reading leading me to have little confidence in the tyre pressure.

I think I have been inflating tyres for some 60 years, so I dont know how I have found myself in this current condition.  I wonder if I have become more particular in wanting an accurate and reliable tyre pressure reading,or whether the equipment I am using has become more....throwaway?

[tyreon]

FWIW I think I now have it why my tyre readings indicator was fluctuating. The pumps hose attachment was not attached securely to the tyres valve. At least I hope this is so. I have 20 inch tyres which are difficult to inflate directly to a track hose pump. Thus I have an adaptor which attaches to both tyre valve and track pump hose. A faff. Especially as my vision is impaired and most maintenance has to be carried out outdoors.

Well,lets hope that this is the case.

[martinf]

I have two old-fashioned metal mechanical pressure gauges. One is Presta, and it stays in my "touring" toolkit, I use it if I want to know the tyre pressure when on a bicycle tour. The other is Schraeder, I use this to test tyre pressure on hire cars and vans, because sometimes the pressures are way too low. Both are at least 45 years old, maybe older.

There are pressure gauges on the two SKS stirrup pumps I have, one pump is wide barrelled with a Schraeder fitting and used for motor vehicules, my wheelbarrow, and anything else with Schraeder valves. I take this with me if I go on a long trip with a motor vehicle, it once allowed me to detect a slow puncture and get it repaired at a convenient time. The other is more narrow (easier to reach a high pressure) and used for my bicycles. I also have an electronic pressure gauge, if I want a more precise reading I use this, mainly for my 16" Brompton bikes, where the loss of air when removing the pump head sometimes gives a significant pressure drop compared to the pressure shown by the pump.

There is also a pressure gauge on the Lezyne mini foot pump I take on long tours, but this isn't accurate.

[mickeg]

98 percent of the time I use a Toppeak Joe Blow pump.  Mine is at least a decade old.  That said, mine looks a lot like this and this says it is a new design.
https://www.topeak.com/us/en/product/1079-JOEBLOW-SPORT-III

The gauge on mine works great.  Easy to read when I am not wearing my glasses.

The chuck on mine looks exactly like this, the gray side is for Presta, the black side for Shrader.  Works great but often takes two hands to use.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/pumps/topeak-joe-blow-twinhead-wo-hose/

That said, about 2 percent of the time, I dig out an old Silca pump and get frustrated with the pump leather that never seals well until I pull it out of the pump, stretch it out, and reassemble, then it might work for a day or two.  Gauge on one of mine in Kg/cm^2 is easy to read, the other pump with newer plastic gauge is hard to read.

[Andre Jute]

I use an SKS Rennkompressor. It's a tall vintage racing pump with foldout feet, offered since Jesus was a teenager, and infinitely rebuildable. The pretty accurate gauge is, unfortunately, at the foot of the pump but even though my eyes are not great, I can read it. The Rennkompressor's great advantage, after its reliability (we have a couple in use for about fifteen years and have used none of the parts laid in when we switched to the Rennkompressors) and rebuildability, is the superb multi-valve EVA head which just goes on with zero fuss and no leaks, has an easy to use flipper lock (down is locked, unlike the other pumps designed by idiots who can't spell ergonomics) and, best of all, is available for a tenner from SJS without the tube and presumably more with the tube:



Enlarge the bottom of the pump on this image and you'll see the two holes in the connector end. You may be able to use just the head with whatever pump you have now. There's also now a version of the head with presumably 3 holes, called the Multivalve, and a new super-duper Clic head (with an option to fit it to existing heads), both also sold by SJS. But I have no personal knowledge of the newer two heads, and you might do well to study the Rennkompressor English page at SKS in Germany; if you do, please report back here so we can be experts too.

In case you have to buy a whole new garage pump, you might like to know it's a pump for working mechanics, so the whole thing is a cheaper than boutique pumps for cafe racers, and the spares are a bargain.

If you buy just the head to fit to your existing pump without a gauge, or a useless gauge, or if you buy the whole pump and find the gauge a bit small and far away (Dan the Mod bought a Rennkompressor on my recommendatsdion but he's is a precision cyclist who uses an additional gauge to fine-tune the fifteen percent drop on his tires at any load), SJS also sells a really useful gauge. Dan has a blue one like SJS sells, and my black one is branded by BBB, but it's the same thing. Here's the one SJS sells:



It only works on Presta, and the switching between the several scales (bar, psi, etc) is a bit oversensitive until you get the hang of the pressure and length of action of the reset to zero so you can take another reading,  but that is a pretty finicky complaint for another really reliable, long serving tool, which appears to exist on thin air alone -- mine hasn't even had a new battery in a good 12 or 15 years but then I use it only to check the tyres when I intend hanging it on the limit on the downhills, alas more and more infrequently these days.

Good luck.

[Danneaux]

I second Andre's excellent summary.

Best, Dan.