|   Inflating air shocks: Englund Air Tight no bleed adapters? | Denis
Jan 9, 2004 3:49 PM | | Anyone has had any experience with these? I am looking for a reliable way of inflating my air shocks (front and rear). My biggest frustration is to loose air when I disconnect the pump. If I knew I'd loose 5 psi evertime, that would be fine, but even that is not reproducible...
"Airtight no-bleed adapter This no bleed fitting can be used with any threaded schrader head on any high pressure pump, and insures that you don't loose air pressure when you unscrew the pump. *This adapter is generally not required with Total Air brand pumps. "
http://www.ekosport.com/fs_show_item_details.php?item_id=48
Available |
| Actually, most pumps for quite some time... | TNC
Jan 9, 2004 6:02 PM | | already have this feature. I work at a bike shop, and I haven't seen any of the old style pumps for which that device is made for in a long time. I have one of those. It worked well on pumps without this feature already built in. If that's your pump in the pic, it looks like a model that keeps air loss from occuring at the fork or shock. You will hear air loss with any good pump as you disconnect, but the air is coming from the pump, not the shock/fork. And when you hook up your pump to the shock/fork again, your shock/fork pressure now has to fill up the pump, therefore, a pressure drop. You go with the pressure readout on the guage after pumping up your shock/fork, and that's what you'll have in the shock/fork when you disconnect--unless I'm missing something else here. |
| Problem with low volume air shocks is that... | DeeEight
Jan 11, 2004 3:38 AM | | a lot of the damn volume ends up being what's in the hose of the pump, and thus if you reconnect the pump, the gauge reads about 20-30psi lower than whatever you had just pumped it up to a minute previously. |
| Agreed, the Eko adapter isn't necessary... | f'nætik (aka næstep)
Jan 11, 2004 9:09 AM | | ...and what you're hearing is air loss from the hose. In fact, even with the Eko adapter, you'll still hear the same 'Hiss' during disconnect that you're hearing now.
You can prove this to yourself by filling your shock, then very, very slowly unscrewing your pump adapter until you hear the "hiss" of bleeding air. Stop here. If your adapter head is actually letting air out of the shock, your shock should completely deflate. If it's just air in the hose, the bleeding air will stop and your shock will still have pressure. Either it works or it doesn't, there is no in-between.
If you're not convinced and want to try something a little different, check out the head on Avenir shock pumps. It's a dual knob affair that you first thread on to the valve, then crank down a second knob to depress the actual valve.
Like the Eko adapter, I feel the Avenir head is unnecessary, but it will offer you absolute peace of mind because no air leakage occurs from the hose. In fact, before you install the Avenir pump to the shock to check pressure, you can pressurize the pump and hose to approximately the pressure setting you expect the shock to be at in order to minimize any bleed-over during connection. |
| Interesting, didn't know about the Avenir. | TNC
Jan 11, 2004 9:55 AM | | Yeah, seems like quite a redundant affair, but mechanically impressive for the anal among us with air pressure "correctness". |
| re: Inflating air shocks: Englund Air Tight no bleed adapters? | Denis
Jan 12, 2004 5:37 PM | | Thanks for the info Looks like I am going to pass on the Englund thingy and see how good (or bad) my pump actually is.
Happy trails.
Denis |
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