Topeak JoeBlow Mountain Pump

With the increasing popularity of tubeless tyre systems and the accompanying trend towards wider rims, it’s entirely feasible for mountain bikers to run their tyres below 30psi without encountering issues with tyre squirm or ‘burping’ (for example, I weigh 65kg and happily run 25psi). Even with tubes and narrower rims, it’s unlikely that you’d need to run much more than 37psi. With these requirements in mind, what’s the point of buying a road-oriented pump that’s capable of inflating tyres to 260psi?

The JoeBlow Mountain is Topeak’s entry into the fat-tyre floor pump market, and priced at around $60, it’s pretty affordable for a niche market pump design. It features a fat 44mm outer diameter barrel and the gauge only reads to 70psi. The fat barrel fills large volume tyres with fewer strokes; we put this to the test and a typical floor pump (rated to +200psi) took 38 strokes to get a 2.25-inch tyre from zero to 30psi—the JoeBlow Mountain did it in 18 strokes. It does get tough to pump above 50psi but I was still able to go past the recommended maximum, taking a road bike tyre up to 100psi. On many floor pumps it’s hard to see if you’re at 27 or 35psi but this was much easier with the JoeBlow Mountain.

The valve connector is a double headed affair that works on both presta and schrader valves. It also incorporates a bleed button that further assists with fine tuning your air pressures. While the fat barrel is steel, much of the pump relies on nylon construction; this gives the JoeBlow Mountain a bit of a plastic-feel but we didn’t encounter any durability issues throughout the review and it’s in keeping with the build quality that you’d expect on a $60 floor pump.

Aside from the low-pressure gauge the other benefit of the MTB-specific design became apparent when inflating tubeless tyres. Long ago I invested in an air compressor as it gave me a far better strike-rate when dealing with tubeless tyre conversions (yes, I know UST tyres make it easy but they are also heavy and expensive). Regular floor pumps struggle to provide the sheer volume of air that you need in one big hit to get a loose fitting tyre to seat. Now I’m not going to say that the JoeBlow Mountain will mount every dodgy tubeless tyre conversion but it certainly upped my success rate. The only time I hit any difficulty was when the valve was partially plugged with old sealant—while it can deliver good volume, it doesn’t take much to restrict the airflow and make it really hard to pump. Using a valve with a removable core really helped in these instances. I was able to mount all of my current tyres as tubeless when using this pump, and unlike my compressor, it’s easy to toss in the back of the car and take the JoeBlow on road trips.

If you own both road and mountain bikes and want one pump that covers the lot, this won’t be your first choice. However, if you want a floor pump that’s dialled for MTB applications and will seat tubeless tyres both at home and at events, the JoeBlow Mountain may well be the answer.

Cassons (02) 8882 1900 / www.topeak.com