Birzman Zacoo Tiny Tanker

What a great little pump this Birzman Zacoo Tiny Tanker is. Birzman have been busy over the last couple of years making some really nice kit for your shed and the Tiny Tanker is one of their best offerings yet.

Tiny? Well, smaller than a normal floor pump. It measures 51cm high and the single foot means its footprint is very small; it's easy to tuck away in the garage or the boot of a car. The idea is that you get floor-pump performance with a bit more portability.

The Tiny Tanker is beautifully made. It's an all-alloy construction, which might mean you need to put your gloves on for early-morning inflation in the colder months, but it feels wonderfully solid to use. It's well thought out too, with the head of the hose locating into a slot in the handle to keep everything tidy.

Tech-wise, there's two standout features. The pump features an air-bleed valve which lets you adjust the pressure down a bit if you overshoot; that's a nice touch. The best thing about it, though, is the head. The Snap-It Presta head features a locking collar; you push the head on to the valve, snap the collar down and you're ready to go. It's a wonderfully simple system that creates a good seal almost every time. The only proviso is that it's a bit harder to attach to an empty tube than a screw-on head, but for checking and adjusting tyre pressures it's more or less ideal.

The Snap-It head is Presta only, so if you want to do your kids' bikes or the trailer then you just unscrew it and the remaining section is a screw-on Schraeder head which works just fine.

Inflating a 23mm tyre from flat to 100psi with the Tiny Tanker took 30 strokes. That's more than a full-size track pump but hardly an onerous task, and it's certainly not a struggle. The pump is rated to 220psi which I'd suggest is probably beyond the limit of its powers, but 120psi was no bother and that's as much air as I ever need to pump on a regular basis.

A pump like this, which is designed for full-workshop function but at a smaller size, is always going to be a compromise, but there's very few things about the Tiny Tanker that feel compromised. The only thing that was ever an annoyance was the length of the hose. You need to spin the wheel so the valve is at the bottom because the pump won't reach the top of the wheel. But that's picking holes really. It's a compact track pump that's better built, and performs better, than plenty of the full-size ones I've used. And for that it deserves to be on your shopping list.

Verdict

Great little compact track pump that's as good as most full-size ones.