Originally published at: I did not know that bicycle pumps wear out | Boing Boing
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Especially if you use them to start fires. /s
Bicycle pumps generate a lot of heat, which can be tough on rubber piston seals. (No doubt they could make them with better materials, but that would cost more and they’d sell less pumps.)
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Silca uses replaceable leather washers instead of rubber on their higher end track pumps.
And you can order replacements (here’s one size):
Now the actual pumps themselvers are quite expensive (200 to 500+ USD) but they are built to last forever and be rebuilt. If you use a pump enough to wear normal ones out, and like things built to last, they are worth it in my opinion.
I have a basic model but still find myself very drooling over this incredibly overengineered one (which is almost 4x the price of the standard rebuildable pista model, and costs more than most peoples bikes.)
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Bike people are like audiophiles sometimes, paying 500% more for a 5 or 10% improvement…
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I’m forever bending the tips on Presta valves when I use press-on pumps, so I switched to screw-on pumps and never looked back. Lezyne are my favourite for track pumps, but their hand pumps are not all so small, I think my emergency pump is Topeak or something.
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I reallly really like my lezyne carbon drive lite hand pump.
Value wise ok maybe not so great… But it’s light in the jersey pocket and the tube to valve attachment works really well vs the pumps that direct attach to the valve.
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Hmm I also have several higher end audio components. Cycling and audio are a terrible combo of hobbies for a budget 
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Lezyne aren’t the cheapest, but they are really well built and spare parts are available. I think it’s like a price-per-wear kind of calculation. Unfortunately I live in London so I’ve lost several to theft, none to failure.
The only thing that speaks against having a Lezyne track pump bolted to the floor in a club/office/public use context is that you have to unscrew and flip the adaptor to switch between presta/dunlop and schrader valves, so that part would go missing constantly.
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To be fair, that’s all luxury goods. It’s always an exponential cost curve against rapidly diminishing returns. Then there’s always a line above which returns are zero and you’re paying more for no reason beyond status or branding.
A Bugatti is not 5000% better than a Kia. Depending how you want to measure it, it’s maybe 50-200% better, but costs 50x more.
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They’re actually built that way, as biking involves a lot of cardio, but less upper body resistance work. So the increased inefficiency in pumping is totally rocking your core. When it no longer fills your tires, you’ll also be doing increased leg workouts, from biking on flat tires.
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I’m a bit surprised that they went with zinc for the baseplate of the ‘Ultimate’. Sure, zinc alloy castings are cheap and adequate; but that’s not a product where “cheap and adequate” is on-theme.
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Came here to say this. That the good pumps have replacement parts.
Also, I recommend occasionally oiling your pump and its soft parts.
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It’s apparently selected as it makes a really heavy baseplate.
Here’s an overly detailed review of a bike pump:
https://pezcyclingnews.com/technspec/silca-superpista-ultimate-pump-review/
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The Lezyne ABS2 chuck is great for both shrader and presta on one side. The presta function is a bit finicky on smooth stems though.
Yes I also have a Lezyne track pump 
and it’s great too… Because my Silca doesnt support Schrader valves.
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My garage has an inexpensive air compressor and it’s way better than the hand-operated pumps. It cost only around $100 and it serves many more purposes.
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If you can use it for the rest of your life, you maybe save a lot of resources?
Also, just LOOK at it.
Or, in some cases, for the craftpersonship and the aesthetics. Some bike people don’t give a shit about the branding, and the people who would actually recognise the bespoke bike as such are so marginally small that that I doubt this is about status for them.
It’s more like the audiophiles: more akin to a religious sect with various splinter groups who argue about The Thing And The Whole Of The Thing. It is about belief, and of course quite some people are even into this for the status. However, from my experience, the rest is more like hermits. They acknowledge that other hermits exist and may also be holy men, but they are more concerned about their own hermitage and tomorrow’s spare parts…
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“… I never noticed the dust until I could blast all this compressed air at it” 
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That’s still a return, so I’d call that a layer below the ultimate high point of pure status and branding.
Most market segments these days have a near-the-high-end “just because I like this builder” niche that costs more. Here you’ll find $1000 bespoke pocket knives and such. Above that there’s the land of infinite ridiculousness where rich people live. I’m talking about the Jony Ive turntable for $60,000 here, not a bike designed by some guy you like that is 50% more because he only makes a few a year. That’s still a return. Design is value, but there’s a point above that where even design stops. The Birkin Bag would be another good example of this pointless stratosphere where rich people spend money on nothing because they’ve run out of value to add. In a just world, that would be the “tax them down to this line” line. Better we use that money for healthcare than some trinket that is expensive just to be expensive.
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My SO will take 5 mins starting up the compressor we have, while I’ve already pumped both tires full with my cheap manual pump purchased 23 years ago. I then get to tap my toe for 3 more minutes. 
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