F'ugly ghetto fire extinguisher inflator

larkim

Didn't fancy drilling out the safety valve on the old extinguisher I got free from work so made this very ugly but effective version of a tubeless inflator.

Operating handle is kept open when being pressurised, then when that is closed the tap valve is opened up and the operating handle discharges the air as required.

Certainly made inflating easy on the tyre I used today.

The Rookie

A 2l coke bottle works perfectly, why go to the hassle!

larkim

A bit of fun. The coke bottle was getting a bit tired, and I'd only put a very short tube on the end so it was just a pain to use. And the coke bottle I've got was always getting bashed in the garage so it was only a matter of time before it went pop on me!

Plus got most of the parts for free so was just a diversion on a Saturday to get it sorted.

The other fire extiinguisher mods I've seen before involved drilling out the safety valve, and on the one I got my hands on I'm not convinced it would work as well, so just thought I'd post an alternative which required nothing more than sawing off the hose and then lots of cable ties / PTFE tape / jubiliee clips and a couple of cheap parts.

The Rookie

Fair enough.......

larkim

I'm waiting for the time I pressurise it and all of my joints in the hose come flying apart (!), though it held up to 100psi when I tried it out yesterday.

The Rookie

I've pushed the coke bottle to 100psi as a test......it was a wee bit bulged.

100 is about the comfy limit of my track pump before it starts to get a bit like hard work.

larkim

Now that I know I can have 100psi on tap, I think making a coke bottle rocket could work well. Some more fun for the weekend!

larkim

larkim wrote:

I'm waiting for the time I pressurise it and all of my joints in the hose come flying apart (!), though it held up to 100psi when I tried it out yesterday.

So after over 12 months with no need to reinflate tyres with rapid pressure, son finally burped his tyres to a state where inflating with the track pump wasn't getting anywhere. So it was time to get out the fire extinguisher!

Sadly we had three issues. Firstly, he'd scratched holes in the rim tape so that when we inflated for the first time it went down overnight, so after diagnosing the fault (with a couple of inflations in between) had to re-tape the tyre and start from scratch.

Second problem was that he managed to lose the removeable valve core so that I had just one to inflate the fire extinguisher and then move it across to put in the tyre once inflated.

Third problem was that quite a few of my connections started coming apart. It was clear that they were becoming a weak link, and were getting on my nerves.

So to solve items 2 and 3 I ripped a spare inner tube apart (one which had a presta valve with a non-removeable core) and plucked up the courage to drill through the nut which acted as the pressure relief valve. I used a 6mm bit and had to drill through both the top and the bottom of the valve screw, and then the presta valve was pushed though from the rear (the bottom of the valve was flared so it had to go in this way around) and the nut then screwed back into the slot for the pressure relief valve. And hey presto, all much simpler.

(sorry the linked images aren't available any more - photobucket has decided to stop linking unless a substantial fee is paid and I haven't got around to moving the images over to imgur or similar.)