Originally Posted by
Metaluna
Another Specialized pump head hater here. Just awful. I bought an AirTool about 9 years ago and could never get the head to seal properly without a lot of fiddling, and it liked to bend Presta valve cores too. I finally replaced it, first with a Silca then a Topeak dual-head. The rest of the pump has worked great though throughout all that time. Recently I went on a biking trip/vacation with a friend. He brought his brand new Specialized pump, and, wow, nothing at all has changed. The Specialized head is still finicky as hell. He seemed to have the hang of it though, and he's a noob, so there must be some technique to it that requires you to unlearn how every other pump head is used (unscrewing the Presta nut only part way seemed to help a lot, IIRC). I ended up using my Road Morph most of the time on that trip.
funny
specialize manufactures and sells
or has others manufacture and then sells
bikes
tires
helmets
pumps
among other things
however
when i worked in a shop years ago
about ninety percent of the specialized helmets we sold had the plastic mechanism at the back break
and turn into a jagged head poking device
and about twenty five percent of the specialized tires had the bead pull out of the sidewall and blow out catastrophically
a few years later i got a job in another shop that sold specialized bikes as well as accessories
and guess what
there was still about a twenty five percent failure rate on their tires
and people with specialized helmets still wound up with scars on the back of their heads
and probably ten percent of the bikes sold with specialized branded hubs came back with failed freehub mechanisms
the one thing i can say about my experience with them is that they were always quick with warranty replacements of whatever failed
about six years after that
a friend of mine bought a very nice specialized full suspension bike
and about half way through a season of regular but generally non abusive riding
the rear freehub mechanism failed
and specialized
who generally did such a good job with warranty replacements
had run out of hubs and wheels to use as replacements
because of the large number of failures they had that year