Silca Terra Floor Pump

The Silca Terra Floor Pump is superbly engineered, durable, accurate and a joy to use. It works equally well on high pressure tyres and the high volume, low pressure rubber found on gravel bikes, mountain bikes or even fat bikes – but like everything Silca makes, it's quite expensive.

Silca's Terra Floor Pump is a fresh evolution of an old pump, and while it keeps the high-volume abilities and easy-to-read low pressure gauge, it adds high pressure capabilities. It's genuinely great for your road bike as well as your gravel, mountain or fat bike.

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As you'd expect at this price, the build quality is top notch. The base, barrel, piston and chuck are all aluminium, and not just the usual black either.

Meanwhile the handle is made from hand-turned ash and beautifully finished. The proportions are generous; the handle is wide enough to get both hands on, and the diameter feels just right.

The base, made from a single piece of aluminium, has two legs for putting your feet on and a pressure gauge as a third leg. The pump feels solid on the ground and the footprint is wide enough to keep the whole thing stable.

The hose is about 3ft (90cm-ish) long, and tucks away nicely into the two slots on the plastic barrel end cap. The hose guide on the handle is a nice touch.

Chuck

The aluminium chuck works really well and was reliable throughout the test; I had no issues with leaks or it popping off any of the valves I tried.

Silca says the chuck is based on its Tattico mini pump design; it works on both Schrader and Presta valves by virtue of the threaded reversible end cap. Unlike, I suspect, most of you, I do have a few bikes in my fleet that use Schrader valves – they seem to be norm in BMX racing. I thought having to unscrew the head to swap between Presta and Schrader would be a pain, but the engineering on the chuck is so superb that it's a non-issue.

By that I mean the screw thread is clean and super-easy to get started, and you don't have to do the end-cap tight at all – the last half turn gives you very tactile feedback that the o-ring is being squashed, and that the end cap is where it needs to be.

The camlock on the chuck works well, and while it's a little stiff, I suspect this will ease with a bit more use. There's also an air bleed button on the chuck to fine-tune air pressure.

Pressure reading

The pressure gauge on this pump is big at 3in (76mm) and the numbers are large enough to easily read while standing – I can just about read them without my glasses.

The scale shows both psi and bar and is non-linear; half is taken up by 0-30psi, while the other half runs from 30-120psi. The advantage is you get 0.5psi increments and easy accuracy for the first 30psi, where it really counts - hang around in the pits of any cyclo-cross or cross-country race if you don't believe me on that. Then you get 1psi increments and good accuracy for the higher pressures too.

Pump action

The pumping action on this Silca pump is really smooth. Due to an unfortunate lack of landing skills to go along with my jumping ambitions, I'm temporarily one-handed, but I still had no problem achieving my desired pressures on a variety of tyre sizes.

In case you're interested, here are some stroke counts for tubeless 700C tyres:

• 25mm Schwalbe One: 15 strokes to 60psi, and a further eight to 90psi (I stopped at 90psi because I didn't want a sealanty face, not because pumping became too hard).
• 43mm Panaracer Gravel King Small Knob: 19 strokes (stop laughing at the back) to 30 psi and 11 more to 50 psi. I would run that tyre anywhere between those values.

If your eyes glazed over there, let me summarise: this pump will get your tyres up to accurate pressure without much effort and well before you get bored of pumping.

Value

I'm not going to argue that £180 is anything other than very expensive for a pump.

Topeak's Joe Blow Sport III is good enough to win Best Overall in our best track pumps roundup and now costs £47.99, for instance. Alternatively, Cannondale's Precise Floor Pump is £54.99 and also reviewed extremely well, and don't worry – you don't really need a precise floor to use it. Chortle. Anyway, both are less than a third of the price of this Silca.

And those aren't even the cheap pumps. At the budget end, £17.99 will get you Lifeline's Essential Track Pump, and it will also pump up your tyres.

You can, as ever, spend more instead, especially if you look at the rest of Silca's range. The SuperPista Digital Floor Pump now costs £390, or £550 if you go for the Ultimate Hiro Edition. Pay that and you'll be my hero too.

Overall

This pump is really well designed and a joy to use. It genuinely works equally well for high volume and high pressure tyres, and the chuck is the best reversible Presta/Schrader design I've used. The price can be somewhat justified by the enjoyment I get in its superb engineering every time I use it, and the knowledge that it will probably still work when I'm done and it gets passed on to my son, and then maybe his children too.

Verdict

Truly excellent pump for both high volumes and high pressures, but very expensive