Adventure With The Pump

My first experience with the cycle pump was turning out to be quite a disaster. But somehow I retrieved the situation and managed to pump my tube properly. Here is the  hilarious story.

Modern bikes can have any of two types of valves. One is Presta and the other is Schrader which is the old type. The pump nozzle has to be different for these two types. My pump, I was told had both. The old mechanic at the shop even showed me how to change it. Thank God that he did. It is not a very simple flip of a key or button. You need to open up things and reassemble etc. But once you have been shown, you can quite do it. No rocket science involved.

He set it to the Presta system. They did not have any bike with a Presta valve at the store. So he could not show me how it operates. I said I don't really need to see such a simple thing in action. Just show me that air comes out of the nozzle as you pump and it did. I was happy and I came back.

Come home. I sat down to pump my bike up. I took the cap off from the top of the valve. Loosened the nut on the valve and checked that air was hissing out as I lightly tapped the top. Now is the time to engage the nozzle on the valve. I did. And all the air from the tube went out with a short hiss. There was obviously very little air inside. But more worryingly, the nozzle was just not sitting tight on the valve so that I could press the pump.

Felt quite helpless. Tried reaching Someswar several times to understand what I was doing wrong. There is very little that can go wrong actually. Anyway, his phone was unavailable. After considerable sweating and frustrating attempts, I took out the nozzle. I did the only thing that I had not done yet. I put what was supposed to be the Schrader nozzle. And presto !!! It worked :-)

The illiterate mechanic had no idea which side was Presta.

The tube pumped up quite nicely upto 80/90 PSI with just a few strokes. But after this it became very hard. Pumping was increasingly more difficult. My target was 120 PSI. But I could not go beyond 110. Someshwar had called back just now and told me that 110 is fine. He advised 100 for the front. Let me see how it feels. We used to keep the front wheel a little less so that it wouldn't bounce.