Bontrager TLR Flash Charger floor pump

If you've made the switch to tubeless road tyres and you're looking for a new track pump then the Bontrager TLR Flash Charger should be on your shorltist. It's a good pump (admittedly with one drawback) but its ability to charge up and deliver a compressor-like stream of air to seat tubeless tyres is a really neat trick and one that it performs admirably, every time so far.

Getting your tubeless tyres seated is one of the main faffs of tubeless. A compressor makes it a simple job, but compressors are expensive. You can use a CO2 cannister, but the cold temperature of the gas can affect the sealant. And a normal track pump doesn't always get the job done.

If you look online you'll see plenty of tutorials for making your own Heath-Robinson-esque inflation system; normally this is some kind of pressure vessel (a fizzy drinks bottle, for example) that you charge up and then dump all the air into the tyre at once to push the tyre into the bead and seat it there. And that's exactly what the TLR Flash Charger does, albeit in a more finished package.

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The pump has two chambers and a lever. Push the lever down and the smaller chamber is used to fill the bigger one, up to a pressure of 160psi. That takes a while but it's not hard work. Once the needle on the top-mounted gauge is in the green zone, it's time to attach the smart head to the valve and flip the lever, which releases a constant stream of air into the tyre. It's not at as high a pressure as a CO2 cannister and it doesn't come out as quickly, so there's no issues with temperature, but it comes out quickly enough to seat the tyre, and there's enough air in the chamber to get the tyre up to a decent pressure once the bead is sealed.

So far it's worked every time. We've slung a number of different tyres – some old, some new – on to a variety of carbon and alloy rims and so far with a 100% success rate - even on a tyre/rim combo that defied all attempts to seat the bead by other means. Ironically the tyre was the Bontrager R3 TLR (test coming soon) the rim was the Novatec CXD we tested last year /content/review/121253-novatec-cxd-aluminium-clincher-wheelset. With a 25mm tyre there's generally about 50psi in the chamber once the pressures have equalised, so it's just a case of pumping up to your desired number. The narrow pmping barrel doesn't have a huge capacity as it's designed to get to high pressures easily, so that takes a bit longer than a standard floor pump, but it itsn't hard.

The one disappointment in the pump is that there's no non-return valve in the head, so if you attach the hose to your tyre to top it up the pressure in the tyre equalises with that in the chamber. That means your 100psi tyre will be down to about 60psi before you start. If there was a non-return valve you'd still have to get the main chamber up to the pressure of the tyre before it started inflating it, so you'd have to do a bit of work either way. A better solution would be to have an option to bypass the big chamber for general pumping.

Depending on your point of view that's either a fairly minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things or bloomin' irritating - opinion was divided in the road.cc office. Given its price tag though it's reasonable to expect Bontrager not to have made the once in a blue moon (for most of us) task of seating a tubeless tyre hassle free at the expense of adding to the hassle - if only slightly - of the more regular task of topping the air up.

Overall the TLR Flash Charger does a great job of dealing with your tubeless tyres and getting them airtight. It's solidly built with a wide and stable base, an easy to read gauge, a generous hose and a very decent smart head that's happy with presta or schraeder valves. Whether that's enough to justify the £100 price tag is probably going to depend on how often you have to fit a tubeless tyre - if you're doing it a lot the TLR easily justifies that price tag. If you've just got the one pair to fit and you don't plan on taking them off once their on, then possibly this is going to be overkill.

Verdict

Well made pump with a great party trick for getting your tubeless tyres seated