Pedalon had them on sale for 85 quid – out of stock now – and I bought one. Turned up today and it seems very well thought out and a solid bit of kit – weighs 2.85kg… The barrels and base are metal, the handle’s plastic, so is the release trigger thing for the air reservoir, but it’s no big deal unless you’re convinced that everything must be made of metal for it to work.
You inflate the pressurised reservoir with about 45 strokes of the pump, connect it to the tyre valve and pull up the red handle to release the air and whoosh…. I inflated three tubeless tyres earlier, just for the hell of it, and they all went up instantly, no problems seating the bead at all. It’s like magic.
I bought it because I ride a fair bit. Change tyres quite regularly on several different bikes, all run tubeless and I simple get bored with the faff and effort of trying to seat various tyre and rim combinations.
I get that I could probably bodge a cut-priceI alternative using a pop bottle or the spare tyre from my car or a cunningly manipulated Space Hopper or an Aeropress, but I like the neatness of the concept and I’m a bit of a sucker for clever gadgetry. Mostly though I just like the idea of not wasting hours faffing with tubeless tyres.
So yeah, so far, I reckon it seems pretty good.
Oh, one of the reviews I read said that the base of the pump is cheap plastic rather than metal. Maybe that was the case on pre-production test pumps, but the one I have definitely has a metal base.