What cheap options are there for car tyre duties as well as first time tubeless user?!
Any particular power or pressure best?

Thanks

Chris

Airflow is king – look for the biggest L per Min you can. Lidl and Aldi do really good ones for around 70-80 every now and again. You need somewhere to keep them though! They are fairly big but good enough for any job you could ever want to do (you’ll be airpainting your house and using a nail gun to make fencing before you know it 😉 )

if its just for topping up car tyres you wont need anything big, the litres per minute refers to the volume pumped into the receiver. You need lots for tools and spraying but blowing tyres up can be done slowly.

Seating tubeless is done from the air in the reciever, will only need a few liters like the tanks you blow up with a track pump.

Can fully recommend the Impax range from screwfix, have a 6l tiny portable and the big one they do that runs a HVLP gun just about but is still pretty small and portable.

As Ben says, you use them more than you think you will and loads of air is always handy. Nothing beats compressed air for cleaning and drying drive trains, brakes and general maintenance 🙂

I got one from lidls on a special day. Something stupid like £50.

Good points
It works

Bad points
It uses a different fitting to every uk tool available
It leaks air at every connection on the how it is just about good enough to stop me spending a couple hundred quod on a decent one.

I saw an advert for some gadget for inflating tubeless tyres. Basically you pump loads of air into that and then it releases it quickly into the tyre. The speed of release is the key for seating awkward tubeless tyres. Great but £60 which was more than my crappy compressor.

As m the cat says, using aid blasts go clean and dry stuff is great fun and quite efficient . Buy a piss cheap compressor if you have somewhere to store it

We got one of the cheap Aldi ones, its like a box and it came with a load of fittings. Pops tyres on to rims in seconds, does the car tyres with no problems and has a tool for blowing dust out of the brakes. Doesn’t take up alot of room and is mounted on the garage wall out of the way.

I have a fairly nice SIP compressor in the garage, very useful but tbh I got it to respray the motorbike, I probably wouldn’t buy one for the jobs I use it for now. But I do like having it.

Even then, I still have a wee 12V rattlebox compressor in the car for its tyres- it’s just about location, it’s easier to plug it in than it is to drag an air hose from the garage to the car.

WorldClassAccident – Member

Bad points
It uses a different fitting to every uk tool available

It’d cost basically nothing to change that, though.

Thanks for all of the advice. Might have to keep my eyes open for an Aldi/Lidl special!

Cheers

Ps no where to store it so will cross that hurdle when I buy one!

Screw fix

I bought the Stanley 6ltr compressor from screwfix last week.
Does the job well, comes with a hose that uses the stubby Euro type connectors.
I’ve had a couple of issues with it ejecting couplings when lightly put down on the floor. Seems to do it with several tools so I’m going to change the fittings to the longer standard type.
Otherwise, relatively compact, runs up to pressure quickly. 80 quid.

How do those of you with compressors inflate tubeless tyres?

Car to presta adaptors screw onto the valve, so don’t work with the valve in (https://www.evanscycles.com/innovations-presta-valve-adapter-EV170954)

Compressor attachments with presta valves are very expensive (https://www.evanscycles.com/park-shop-inflator-inf1-for-use-with-air-compressor-EV185169)

Best option I’ve found so far is a small piece of plastic tube stuck over the valve ones end and stuck in the car inflator at the other, but it doesn’t give good flow rate into the tyre.

We bought one of these http://www.screwfix.com/p/stanley-dn-8-5-4-5ltr-portable-air-compressor-240v/22374 thinking it’d be ideal for inflating tyres and not take up too much space, but haven’t had much luck.

Do the small 12v rattle box ones work for tubeless seating?

How do those of you with compressors inflate tubeless tyres?

Old car gun and a Topeak Super Chuck, was about £7. Cut the old head off and attach that, does tubeless with the core out.

With that setup and a good seal that small Stanley compressor works a treat, but you need a bigger tank for tricky tyres.

There are cheaper attachments than the Park one.
http://nextdaytyres.co.uk/details.aspx/PRESTAFLATOR-DELUXE-BICYCLE-INFLATOR-TOOL/290

I used mine to do tubeless today. I will photo the £2.99 solution in the morning

raymeridians – Member

How do those of you with compressors inflate tubeless tyres?

I got a cheap (£6 I think) car inflator, chopped the valve off it, and fitted the valve off a Joe Blow. Well, a wee bit more complex than that, there was fannying about with jubilee clips and such to get it to work well but that’s the basic deal.

cjr61 – Member

Do the small 12v rattle box ones work for tubeless seating?

Nah, almost completely useless, they deliver air about as fast as a bad track pump.

Put the end of this from screwfix….

Into the end of the rubber hose of one of these from a cheap track pump/replacement head or broken old one…

The rubber tube seems a good size. Mine works without a jubilee clip but add one if you like.

Works quite nicely off my 6ltr compressor.

As minniethecat says, it’s not about the power of the compressor side you need to be concerned with. A compressor is basically three things: a tank capable of holding pressurised gas; a means of pushing gas into it and a means of attaching it to whatever you want to inflate or run.

For inflating tubeless bike tyres all you need is a sufficient volume of compressed air in the tank so that when you release it the pressure and therefore speed of release of air is sufficient to “pop” the tyre on to the rim. The speed at which you get the air *into* the tank is, within reason, not important, hence the ghetto inflator which uses a track pump and good old elbow grease as its charging mechanism.

Commercial use compressors need a decent sized motor to replenish the tank quickly enough to cope with the constant usage of power tools and the like.

The 12v rattlebox (if it’s what I think it is) isn’t a compressor but an inflator – it has no storage tank.

Mine came with the tyre inflator and pressure gauge as part of the package.

I bought one of these…

http://www.screwfix.com/p/stanley-8216035scr011-24ltr-compressor-with-5-piece-accessory-kit-240v/48089?cm_sp=Search-_-SearchRec-_-Area2&_requestid=43507#_=p

Seems to do the trick; I had a tantrum trying to inflate my Mountain Kings with a track pump. Seems to do the trick pretty well.

This is in the classifieds right now.