Wha? How do you snap a valve stem with a pump? Do you take a 3 week incompetence course or does somebody make hammer action pumps!?

In 30 years of riding (ҞЯΔP! - I vowed I'd never say stuff like that!). And by-gum- in my day valves were made from second hand treacle, not like this new-fangled metal stuff.

With today's tiny pumps it's even harder to break them because you don't have the leverage of a long frame-fitting pump. Besides, three weeks ago I watched somebody break a valve with a CO2 canister attachent and 2 Km (and a third inner-tube) later he ran out of gas too, good job I was slower and had a pump.

Grumble, grumble, moan...

160psi my arse.

If you snap the valve, you are doing it wrong.

But a nozzle IS nice if you want to get some leverage in a more comfortable position.

It doesn't say how many strokes it takes to get to 160psi - probably 160

Up until a couple of weeks back I'd have agreed- never snapped one ever, then one just went while fixing a flat by the side of the road. Don't think I was doing anything particularly brutal to it, it just broke.

Still, I'm confident enought that it won't happen again that I don't feel the need to get a pump designed to avoid it.

It's genuinely hard to take this 'problem' seriously, whilst no doubt (having made this assertion) I'll snap a valve stem to-morrow, I've never, ever had this problem - it seems more like a solution chasing a problem than anything else. Still if it keeps people who otherwise would be mainlining heroin, working in the city of London, burgling houses, creating commercial pay per view paedophile websites (or some such) in honest decent work then fair enough.

M