BLACKBURN CORE

£99.99

SPECIFICATION Height: 132cm • Hose length: 132cm • Contact: zyrofisher.co.uk

The Core is Blackburn’s flagship floor pump and features a lightweight 6061-series aluminium construction, an ergonomic handle and a stable, three-point base. There’s only a bit of rubber on the tips of two of the feet, so in theory it could move around under your feet during inflating, but the Core is a High Pressure (HP) design, so we never had to push that hard on the handle. However, that meant it took quite a while to get our test tyre up to pressure – after 30 strokes this pump had only put 15psi in the tyre, making it the slowest on test. One of the reasons it doesn’t push that much air per stroke is because the Core is a tall pump and our 5ft 10in testers found it awkward to get the handle to full extension, so we were actually under using its capacity. The Core also has an equally long hose, which is great for pumping up your tyres while in a bike stand, and the hose clips away neatly on the side using U-shaped fasteners.

Blackburn calls the pump head an Airtap design, but it’s almost identical to the one on the Lifeline Airblast. It has a simple threaded chuck that you swap over for Schrader or Presta valve types. The head also features an integrated bleed button that Blackburn claims lets you bleed air from the tyre, but we couldn’t get it to work correctly and it would only bleed air from the hose. The Core has a smooth action, has a massive easy-to-read gauge and oozes quality, but it does take longer to get fat tyres inflated.

However, if you’re a lanky rider this might just be the track pump you’re after.