Airace Speed F2 mini floor pump

Airace is a Taiwan-based company manufacturing a range of cycling tools and accessories, including this Speed F2 Mini Floor Pump. As the name suggests, it's a floor pump that's small enough to carry. It's light, neat and effective, and worth considering if you don't get on with conventional minipumps, C02 canisters, or any pump with a direct push-on valve fitting.

From the very start, it's important to note that the Speed F2 is a floor pump that's designed to be carried on the bike, so it shouldn't be compared directly with workshop floor-pumps, nor with conventional minipumps that usually fix alongside a bottle cage or slip in a back pocket, nor indeed with good old fashioned full-length frame-fitting pumps.

In essence, the Airace Speed F2 takes elements from all of these various pump types and, although there's obviously some compromise, the end result is a very handy piece of kit. It will be useful for commuters, tourists, adventure cyclists, tandem riders or anyone riding a bike with larger-sized tyres. And it's especially handy if you don't want to carry a bundle of canisters or fiddle around with a minuscule pump that takes all day to get your tyre up to a decent riding pressure.

The overall size of the pump is 32cm long, with the barrel about 2.4cm wide (3.2cm at the widest point – the valve connector). It appears to be very well engineered and has a nice confidence-inspiring solid feel. The body and shaft are of shiny aluminium, with hard plastic components to connect at the pumping and inflating ends.

At the top of the pump, a metal handle unfolds on a plastic support to make a hand grip attached to the outer body. When pumping, the outer body goes up and down while the inner shaft stays put – so the reverse action to most pumps, but no different in practice.

A heavy wire foot pad folds down from the base of the pump, after unclipping from small raised pips on the barrel that hold it in place, and rests on the floor.

The inflating hose is inside the shaft of the pump; it's released by gently pressing two studs in the base of the shaft. It's 24cm long, which is plenty long enough to reach from pump to valve, although you need to position the wheel with the valve at the bottom.

Interestingly, the inflating hose consists of three sections which telescope down to fit inside the shaft – a 14cm central solid section with a shorter flexible section at either end. This solid section is another reason the valve needs to be at the bottom of the wheel when you're pumping.

At the end of the inflating hose is the valve connector with an inner section that can be adjusted to fit both main valve types - Schrader and Presta (plus 'Dunlop' valves, which are the old type we used to call 'Woods'). The connector is held in place with a positive locking lever.

It can be a slight fiddle getting the valve connector onto the valve itself thanks to the aforementioned solid central section of hose, but it's not a deal-breaker.

There's no pressure gauge on this model. There is one the Speed F2 G, but that costs around £12 more.

With a foot on the footrest, I found it best to kneel down to operate the pump. Using one hand is fine as the tyre starts to fill with air, but two hands are useful to maintain sufficient force on the pump as the pressure builds up inside the tyre. The handle is small though, so it's one hand on top of the other.

Testing first on a skinny 700 x 20 tyre, it took 100 thrusts to achieve 85 psi and a further 50 thrusts to reach 110 psi. In contrast, I then tested it on a fat 700 x 32 tyre, where it took 150 thrusts to reach 70 psi and further 50 thrusts to reach 85psi.

It was still an effort to get the fat tyres up to pressure, but the Airace Speed F2 was a lot easier than a conventional full-length frame-fitting pump (and much quicker than a normal mini pump). The two handed technique, with the pump resting firmly on the ground, also meant doing the job safely, with no chance of damage to the valve.

For carrying this pump on your bike, a clip is provided which bolts onto the bottle cage bosses in your frame. But this means pump clip OR bottle cage. You can't have both, as the clip does not extend to the side of the bottle as on many types of minipump carrier.

Alternatively, you can fit the pump clip to another part of your bike's frame with the adjustable (and removable) plastic ties provided with the pump. These ties are long, so oversized tubes are no problem. Even the drainpipe- sized horizontal bottom tube on a tandem proved no problem, and that is indeed our test pump's new home.

If you were short of spare tube space due to cable run or other fittings, you could also use the plastic ties to fit the carrier alongside your bottle cage, but the end result might look a bit bulky.

A Velcro strap is provided to secure the pump to the clip, but this seems hardly necessary as the clip firmly grips the pump.

A final option for commuters and tourists: you could carry this pump inside your pannier bag or full-sized saddlebag, or use the pump loops that feature on many rack bags. (When the pump is not in the clip, you'll need a rubber band around the wire foot pad to hold it in place against the barrel.)

The Airace Speed F2 Mini Floor Pump has a recommended retail of £32, but you can find it anywhere between £20 and £30 at local bike shops and the usual on-line stores. (At the time of writing, one on-line store had it at less than twenty quid.) This price compares well against similar mini floor pumps such as the Topeak Road Morph which goes for about £30 or the Lezyne Micro Floor Drive at about £40 – although that latter pump has more metal parts and a pressure gauge.

All in all, for a mini floor pump that you're going to use only occasionally for road-side puncture repairs, especially on fat tyres, the Airace Speed F2 does a good job at a fair price, and is well worth considering.

Verdict

Floor pump that's small enough to carry on the bike: light, neat, effective, well-made and fairly priced