Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Silca Presta Gauge

If you've been following along at home you, the reader, know that I've been trying to scale down the amount of stuff I carry around with me on the bicycle.
I used to carry a waist pack, but now I've gotten rid of some non essentials and am slowly working on carrying my stuff in a jersey pocket.
One of the heavier items I carry around is a presta valve tire gauge.
Why, I dunno.
I suppose it's some OCD thing to have the correct amount of air pressure in my tires after I've had a flat.
I got one of them Meiser/Accugage thingys, we'll see it in a minute.
Well once on the eVilness, I saw this old Dunlop presta gauge that looked like a golf pencil.
Unfortunately, it went for something outrageous so my hunt continues for a small presta valve gauge.
Sort of.
I mean I found this:



It is what appears to be the head of a bicycle pump, I mean it's from Silca, but you can use just the gauge part.
As you can see it's sort of on the small side, but still a bit heavy as it looks like it's made of steel.
How does it work?
Well I used it once and then it quit.
Then it started working again.
I have no idea what happened except maybe some dirt got into the valve part cause after I blew it out it worked again.
Okay, my Specialized pump at 4 bar, the Accugage, and the Silca thingy:





Not too bad.
Let's try 6 bar, same sequence:





It seems to confirm my observation that the Specialized gauge reads a bit "hot."
Then again, I've only had the Meiser/Accugage to test against, but now the Silca seems to read around the same.
The Silca thingy was like eight bucks on the eVilness and as soon as I'm done here I'm going back to buy two more.
Small and cheap, something to toss in your seat bag.
Especially if you are like me and wondering about the air pressure in your tires bothers you to no end.
Oh yeah, Italian Air Pressure Goodness(IAPG).

6 comments:

Steve A said...

Pressure gages on the road are like rear view mirrors on the Ferrari in "Gumball Rally." Watch that scene and then look again at your Italian goodness.

limom said...

Knowing that I've reinflated my tire to the recommended pressure is useless?

limom said...

Better yet, I'll just rip that tire off the rim, yell "I don't need no stinkin tires!" and just keep going.

John Romeo Alpha said...

I like pumps with gauges on 'em. Road morph. Yeah! I guess you could cut the pump part off, though, and have a light gauge left.

limom said...

I revisited the Road Morph when I thought about a frame mounted pump.
I like yours, center mounted on the seat tube and I only use one cage.
Then again, I got 2.5 mini pumps including a mini morph so-
Well you know what I mean.

Anonymous said...

I've been searching for the same thing, for the same reason! I can't believe no one makes a tiny pressure gauge. They make them for paintball, but the first one I got didn't have the right valve adapter on it, so now I just ordered this from Amazon, even though I'm not sure it will work:
Dye Hyper3 Inline Regulator Tester
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Z5WNPM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A12L8D89Z0R8SS