compact pump vs floor pump

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I'm sure this question has come up before, but I did a search and couldn't find anything. I'm a weekend cyclist with a touring bike and I'm getting more and more serious about short and then extended tours. I have a specialized floor pump that I use to inflate the tires before each ride. It's great and I really like it. A few strokes and I have enough air to last the ride. I also have a small Blackburn pump attached to the side of the bike, which I haven't used much. The floor pump is not practical on tours, and I have tentative plans to rely on the smaller pump.

Here are my concerns: It takes over 200 strokes with the small pump to go from empty to 80 psi. Ideally, I'd like a little more pressure, but by this time I'm tired of pumping. I'm also a little unsure of how much pressure is really in the tires. When I detach the small pump and hook up the larger one, I see that there are around 80 psi after 200 + strokes, but this option won't be possible on the road. What do you use on the road? Am I overly concerned about tire pressure? If this is a major concern, is there a small gauge I can buy to measure tire pressure on the road? Can I just pump up the tires until they feel about right? This was the solution I used as a kid when I had a pump without a guage on it. It worked fine at the time.

I'm grateful for all feedback. Thanks, Keefe.

Hey Keefe,

I had very few problems with using a simple handheld pump on a long tour. To me, the space-saving value outweighed the extra strokes you had to put into pumping up the tire, especially on a long tour when you're not trying to save minutes on your ride time (but you are trying to shave off extra bulk that you have to carry). And with the handheld pump, you eventually develop killer muscles on one arm:P
I didn't use a pressure guage, and ended up having about 5 flats on a 2000 km trip. It doesn't seem like very much at all to me, but I don't have anyone to compare it to. A difference between your childhood bike and your tourer is the weight that your tourer hauls, making pinch flats more likely if your tires are under-inflated.
Are you re-filling your tires with air and then deflating them completely every single ride? That doesn't happen on tours, so you wouldn't have to worry about pumping 200+strokes every morning. I found that just testing tire pressure with my thumb and "topping off" the air each morning if needed worked fine for me.
Cheers,
Blackbird

check out the Topeak Road Morph (http://www.rei.com/online/store/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&catalogId=40000008000&storeId=8000&partNumber=648089&memberId=-2000&link=1&cm_ven=ps_Tleader&cm_ite=datafeed&source=14804&cm_pla=pd_inclusion&cm_cat=datafeed), I will be getting one for my next tour.
cheers

I'm grateful for both responses. I'm going to work with the small pump I have for now. Hopefully as I get more experience with it, I'll get better at using it. (I do not completely deflate the tires, so I rarely go from 0 to 75 or 80 psi.) If I still have trouble with the small pump after several weeks of use, I'll go ahead and buy the Topeak road morph.


Thanks, Keefe.