half a pump

[Alan J. Wylie]

Left the office the evening, unchained the bike, and as I swung it
round noticed that the front tyre was flat. Sighed, put the rubber
gloves on, removed the inner tube, and went for the pump clipped onto
the down tube. It was a TruFlo Maxair, or rather half of one - the
barrel was still there, but the handle and plunger assembly has
disappeared. Fortunately, I'd picked up a cheap pump in the local
Netto a few months ago and left it at work, and it had a Schraeder
fitting, which matched the mountain bike valves - I've put the shiny
new tourer to one side until the rain salt and grit season is over.

Now I'm wondering how and when the innards unscrewed and fell out
without my noticing.

I never found the hole in the inner tube (swapped for spare), or any
foreign body in the tyre either.


--
Alan J. Wylie http://www.wylie.me.uk/
"Perfection [in design] is achieved not when there is nothing left to add,
but rather when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

[Tony Raven]

Alan J. Wylie wrote:
>
> Now I'm wondering how and when the innards unscrewed and fell out
> without my noticing.
>
> I never found the hole in the inner tube (swapped for spare), or any
> foreign body in the tyre either.
>

Sounds like someone let the tyre down and took the pump apart so you
couldn't pump it back up.

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Alan J. Wylie
('[email protected]') wrote:

> Now I'm wondering how and when the innards unscrewed and fell out
> without my noticing.

Human agency?

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
;; languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their
;; pockets for new vocabulary -- James D. Nicoll

 

[Alan J. Wylie]

On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:56:14 +0000, Tony Raven <[email protected]> said:

> Alan J. Wylie wrote:

>> I never found the hole in the inner tube (swapped for spare), or
>> any foreign body in the tyre either.

OK - in daylight, with a sink of water, I've found the pinprick hole.

> Sounds like someone let the tyre down and took the pump apart so you
> couldn't pump it back up.

Unlikely. The bike is chained to railings in line of sight of the
security guard at the reception desk. There was a significant amount
of crud up the barrel of the pump, and around the threads. The cap was
still on the valve. None of the other fittings on the bike had been
fiddled with, especially the dual halogen headlight I mentioned here
previously[1], which is too fiddly, and the connectors too fragile, to
remove from the bike on a regular basis.

I previously mounted the pump with the nozzles pointing up and at the
top of the down tube to try and keep them away from the crud. Now I'm
going to mount it the other way round, so if the plunger and handle
assembly do work loose, they are less likely to drop out.

[1] <http://groups.google.com/group/uk.rec.cycling/msg/25d5bc7ac7ca6ba7>

--
Alan J. Wylie http://www.wylie.me.uk/
"Perfection [in design] is achieved not when there is nothing left to add,
but rather when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery