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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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8 comments

I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

Posted November 15, 2022 5:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: tire inflator Tools

Now and again, your car’s tires lose air. Just a pound or two here and there. If you have an air compressor in your garage, it’s probably heavy and needs plugging in; if you don’t, you’ll need a pocket full of quarters and a nearby gas station, assuming your tires aren’t so flat that they’ll get damaged if you run on them.

Not long ago, when I had some tires to inflate, a friend pressed this little gizmo into my hand: Fix Manufacturing’s Eflator. Literally, it was a gift: It came with neither box nor directions but was intuitively simple to operate despite this. Not much larger than a cellphone, resembling a walkie-talkie, weighing in at around one pound, and operating on a rechargeable 2000 mAh battery, it happily inflated the pneumatic tires on my deflated hand truck in about 38 seconds. A successful test. Not long after, I tasked it with inflating the four flat tires on my long-suffering Model A Ford, just enough to be able to roll it down the driveway for its tow.

Just screw the cap onto the Schrader valve until the join stops hissing, switch it on, and stand back. I pressed the M button (for Manual) on the front of the pump, and let it do its work; you can also set it for a given pressure. The eflator was designed for bicycles and motorcycles, but it worked great on my A. All four of my Model A’s 19-inch Allstate tires were pumped up to 15 pounds, according to the large, clear digital readout on its face, with it taking less than five minutes per tire to get there. Once that ancient, cracked rubber was sufficiently inflated, I rolled the A down my mother-in-law’s driveway to await its tow, and the pump itself slipped back into the glove box in my van. There is a rubber sheath covering the connection between the pump and the hose; do not remove this, as the join between pump and hose gets really hot. The pump itself remains cool enough to touch during operation.

Where the eflator failed was when I tasked it with something it was not designed to do: entirely inflate a car tire. When the Vice Grip Garage charity-auction Silverado had a flat oversized off-road tire after months of sitting in a Phoenix storage unit, I thought I’d give it a shot. Without recharging after my hand truck or the four flat A rubber bands, we made it to about seven and a half pounds of pressure — enough to get it out of the storage unit and onto the waiting transporter — before the batteries simply gave out. So, even in its failure, the unit still succeeded. Had I been so equipped, I could have recharged the unit via its USB-C port. The money spent on it could pay itself back quickly in an emergency, and it will live in most glove boxes or consoles unobtrusively. It comes with a one-year warranty and a nylon carry bag.

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#1

Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 1:22 AM

How about an old fashioned hand pump, that way you get some needed exercise and there are no batteries to give out. Although, if you aren't used to much exercise maybe you will give out.

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#2

Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 4:12 AM

You were lucky to be gifted one, they are about $100 each on the Fix Tool web site.

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#3
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Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 5:00 AM

£34.99 on Amazon (branded Kopobob)

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#4
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Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 5:06 AM

Thanks Dave, I see that one along with loads of other similar devices. Some of them are for cars rather than cycles, I'll have a proper look later.

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Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 12:55 PM

After looking at lots of reviews I have ordered a Michelin mini rechargeable inflator. Cost a little more but looks easy to use, compact & fast. Reviews look good & supported by a major brand name.

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Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/21/2022 4:24 AM

I got the Michelin inflator &, although I have not used it to re-inflate a tyre yet, I am quite impressed with the tool. It feels solid, has a proper lever Schrader connector & you can pre-set the pressure.

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#5

Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/16/2022 10:48 AM

My fave is my Ryobi One+ inflator. Works great, can set for desired pressure and It has a blower for inflating rafts and tubes.

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#7

Re: I Love This Tool: Fix Manufacturing Eflator

11/17/2022 4:31 PM

Maybe I am a rarety. I have a compressor in my garage 240 volt, 150 Litre unit and it is always plugged in, but not on and the whole shed has air plumbed into it through 20mm copper pipe. Three of the outlets are fitted with retractable hose reels and two others are for high flow, well a 1" rattle gun does use a lot of air.

For outside air I built a 50 Litre, 5HP Honda powered compressor, for when the tyre goes flat or the rattle gun is needed 1Km from home. Spoilt, no, just learnt to work smarter not harder.

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