Last week I bought a Silca Super Pista bicy­cle pump. I felt the $20 pre­mium it com­mands over other well-regarded floor pumps was justifiable—the steel cylin­der, the pol­ished beech han­dle, the “Made in Italy” label, and its rep­u­ta­tion for being a repairable hand-me-down kind of prod­uct sold me. How dis­ap­pointed I was!

Out of the box, I dis­cov­ered two prob­lems. First, the ris­ing han­dle and droop­ing pres­sure read­ing told me that air was leak­ing back­wards through the pump seal. I dis­as­sem­bled the one-way valve and dis­cov­ered a loose shred of plas­tic which pre­vented the valve from seat­ing. So I fixed it. Once I got the pump work­ing, the hybrid Schrader/Presta chuck proved to be too tight: I destroyed two tubes try­ing to remove it. (There goes another $12.) So I loos­ened up the chuck’s rub­ber washer and greased it—two things the man­ual says noth­ing about—and now it works fine.

The qual­ity of the clo­sure cap also leaves much to be desired. This plas­tic part is attached to the tube with an ill-fitting self-tapping screw, and was prob­a­bly the source of the debris which jammed the one-way valve. On a pos­i­tive note, I liked the low-impact pack­ag­ing (a printed mesh bag).

In sum­mary, the Silca Super Pista can be made into a nice pump, but due to poor man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices and cost reduc­tion attempts, it is no longer the kind of qual­ity tool you’ll pass on to your kids. Don’t buy it.