Fanylion Mountain Bike Team
Official site of the Fanylion Mountain Bike Team. Includes mountain bike ride guides, gear reviews, bike maintenance, team reports and rider profiles of the Fanylion Racing Team.
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Crank Bros Power Pump Alloy
I never seem to have much luck with pumps you know, and my run of bad luck seems to be continuing with the Crank Brothers Power Pump Alloy.
Having spent no more than £15 on previous mini pumps I thought I would spend a decent amount of money (£29.99) on a metal barrelled pump loaded with features. The Crank Brothers Power Pump Alloy has many features that attracted me to it. Firstly it has a unique pressure adjustment dial which in position 1 pushes a high volume of air into the tyre, speedily getting the tyre up to approx 35psi. Then when things start to get tough you flip the dial to position 2 and the pump then uses a smaller chamber to power the tube up to a claimed max of 130psi. As I run my tyres between 40 and 50psi I thought I was in for some speedy tyre changes.
The pump also has an analogue dial, which was a revelation and clearly shows you how much air you have in and how much pumping you still have to do. These features coupled with beautiful brushed aluminium tubes and a tough looking double head (two fittings, one for presta and one for schraeder) and I thought I had bought the perfect pump. And with its lifetime warranty if it breaks in 5 years time I can just get another: a pump for life! How wrong I was.
At first all was well and the pump worked superbly, getting tyres up to 30psi with less than 80 strokes in the High Volume setting, then maybe 100 more and my tyres were up to 40psi. And I knew they were at 40psi because the natty little pressure gauge told me so. Dispensing with the plastic frame mount I kept the pump in my Hydration pack and it’s compact size meant I hardly knew it was there until needed. Then things started playing up.
Firstly the pressure gauge stopped working properly. Instead of showing the pressure all the time the pump was mounted on the tube it started to only show the pressure on the instroke of the pump. Not the end of the world but it made getting an accurate reading a little more difficult. On occasion the gauge does not work at all. Also, despite the pump supposedly inflating to 130psi I have never managed to get my tyres harder than about 42psi, no matter how long and how hard I try. Then things went really bad.
Something went wrong with the valve and the pump simply stopped blowing up inner tubes. The shaft still kept pushing the air, but something was jamming at the valve and the pressure gauge would soar up to 60psi and above before the handle would shoot back out of your grip and risk taking your knees off. Dismantling the pump (which was very easy) showed the (very simple) guts of the pump to be clean and showing no signs of wear or tear. A mystery.
This pump was then replaced by the very nice people at Raleigh (the distributors) and a brand new pump landed through my door the next day. And to date, after using the pump for two weeks, the pressure dial has already stopped working properly and I have had my first couple of handle-shooting incidents. I am now looking forward to the tirade of the handle shooting back under high pressure, the bent presta valves and the lost time spent on the trail wrestling with this confounded pump. Or should I just replace it now?
Looks/styling :: 8/10
Design features/materials :: 9/10
Performance :: 2/10
Value :: 2/10
Fany fact
Pain is temporary, glory is forever, scars are permanent but you can always spend £200 on repairing your broken bike.