Topeak’s Joe Blow Booster is an easy to use, all in one solution for anyone that wants to seat tricky tubeless tyres or just inflate them, using a high-pressure reservoir to provide enough of a blast of air to get even the most stubborn rubber seated. It’s expensive but it’s the best all-in-one unit I’ve used, by some way.
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The Joe Blow Booster is essentially one of Topeak’s standard track pumps with a large volume reservoir attached to it. By twisting a switch that surrounds the large, high mounted pressure gauge you can divert air from the hose into the one-litre reservoir, before building it up to a maximum pressure of 160psi.
Connect the valve to the tyre you want to get seated, turn the switch back and it provides enough of a blast of high-pressure air to get the tyre beam seated onto the rim. I’ve found it to provide enough grunt to get all but the most annoyingly flimsy of sidewalls or loosest rims of mounted up – I’ve only had one wheel/tyre combo fail to seat using the Joe Blow Booster, which is very impressive.
Another great feature of the Joe Blow Booster is the fact that when it’s switched to the normal ‘inflate’ mode, it will pump up whatever’s connected to the valve directly, rather than having to pressurise the air reservoir first, as with Bontrager’s outwardly similar Flash Charger.
That makes it much more efficient to use as a normal track pump – another job at which is excels. It’s quick and easy to get tyres up to pressure, the head is simple to use and will deal with Presta or Schrader valves with no problem, while the pressure gauge is clear, easy to read and surprisingly accurate when compared against a proper digital gauge, which is not the case with many pumps.
Construction quality is top-notch with a mostly aluminium construction and it’s handled loads of use and abuse being thrown in the back of cars, the garage and random fields, which makes the high price tag easier to swallow. The broad base means it’s stable even when you’re going up to high pressure and there’s a small bleed valve for adjusting pressures too.
It’s definitely the best all-in-one tubeless inflator and pump system I’ve used, so if you regularly inflate tubeless tyres and need a quality track pump anyway, it makes a lot of sense to plump for this. Even if you’ve already got a decent track pump, the ease of use makes it highly tempting too.
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