Floor pumps that survive more than two years, and which part actually fails

Three dead pumps taught me that they nearly all fail in the same place and that the failure is usually repairable.

What breaks

• The head, almost always. The rubber seal inside that grips the valve hardens and stops sealing, so the pump feels like it is working and no air arrives. This is the failure people mistake for a dead pump.
• The hose at the crimp, where it flexes every stroke.
• The main seal on the piston, which dries out. Usually fixable with grease rather than replacement.
• Rarely the gauge, which goes inaccurate rather than dead and is worth ignoring.

What to look for when buying

• A rebuildable head with available spare parts. The single most important feature and it is rarely advertised. If the manufacturer sells a rebuild kit, the pump will last a decade.
• A metal barrel and base, and a base wide enough to stand on with both feet.
• A screw-on head rather than a lever clamp for high pressure, because clamps wear and slip.
• A long hose, which sounds trivial and decides whether you can reach a rear valve without moving the bike.
• Ignore the maximum pressure figure. Almost nobody needs the top of the range and it is a marketing number.

Before replacing one: unscrew the head and look at the rubber grommet inside. If it is hard, flattened or split, that is a part costing very little, and it fixes what looks like a broken pump. I threw away two before finding this out.

The pressure aside: a track pump gauge is a rough guide. Most riders are running far higher pressures than they need, and the modern advice is considerably lower than the number printed on the sidewall.