Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS Pump Review

by Paul Horta-Hopkins · 13/01/2016

Review of the Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS Pump

Simon Tuck

Every cyclist needs a track pump, the Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS Pump is a good basic version that should serve you well.

A floor pump – or track pump – is the best way to get air into your tyres, football, and even paddling pool. Every garage should have one. The Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS Pump sits towards the bottom of the range of Lezyne floor pumps. The main differences in the range are the materials they are made from, some have digital gauges and different valve adapters. This one has a steel barrel and piston, with a composite base.

Every cyclist should have a track pump, the Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS pump makes inflation duties much more bearable

I imagined that over time the wooden handles on this pump would gently mould to the shape of my hand, but sadly the thickness of the lacquer on them has prevented this over the last couple of years, or maybe I just don’t use it enough. Probably just as well, splinters aren’t very nice and you’ll have no issues with splinters from this handle. It still feels nice though.

The 43 inch/ 130cm hose on this pump will give you plenty of room to move about and I can just about reach my tyres when the bike is in the workstand. I’m 6ft, so the bike is pretty high up there. The hose neatly runs around the handle and clips into the base when not in use.

This is a High Pressure pump which Lezyne recommend for road tyres. They sell a High Volume pump with a larger piston to get MTB tyres up to pressure quicker. If you have both types of bike (N+1) then they recommend this High Pressure type, and it works just as well on my road bike 25mm clinchers as it did on my colleague’s hybrid when I swapped her knobblies over with something a bit more commuter friendly.

Despite having sore fingers from getting the old tyres off the ‘tubeless ready’ rims, pumping the tyres up from empty was just an easy matter of unscrewing the ABS flip thread chuck and ‘flipping it’ from the Presta side to the larger Schrader threaded side then pumping them up until I could see the required pressure on the easy to read 2.5 inch diameter gauge.

Although I didn’t count the strokes, it wasn’t impressively quick but they were up to pressure before I got bored, or tired of the process. The screw-on chuck eliminates any nervousness of the pump popping off of the valve; it’s not going to happen.

I nearly came unstuck when my regular wheels broke a spoke and I borrowed some deep rimmed carbon wheels for a ride last year. Unfortunately, the Continental inner tubes they were shod with had an unthreaded extension to get past the deeper rim, not a threaded valve. Obviously Lezyne have included a small bag of adaptors including the usual ball inflator. One of these will slip onto a valve which has no thread to screw on to. It’s supposed to just slip on, but I found I had to slightly adjust the cap to tighten down on the o ring and stop it coming off when I pumped, it also hasn’t got the ABS pressure release button that the screw on chuck has.

The Lezyne Sport Floor Drive ABS comes with a collection of adaptors, more can be bought depending on your needs

You can now buy these pumps with a different type of chuck, called ABS2. The new chuck requires no flipping. To use on a presta valve you pull back the alloy collar and clamp it to the valve, then turn it to seal. For a schrader valve you just screw it on. It still has the ABS pressure release button. Unfortunately it still doesn’t connect to a valve extension which isn’t threaded, but Lezyne tell me they sell valve extensions that are compatible.

The Lezyne pumps are fully rebuildable, and the chucks are all available to buy separately as well as a replacement hose, 2.5” gauge and even an o ring kit. In the couple of years I’ve had mine I’ve only had one issue. I thought I was going to have to buy a new pump as it wasn’t pumping as efficiently. It was taking a couple of pumps just to fill the hose with air! A quick look on the Lezyne website and I followed their instructions and took the top cap off and wiped the inner sleeve and o ring assembly off. This gave it a better seal and it now works again as good as new.

Lezyne make some really nice looking pumps. The build quality is good, the material choice is sensible and the range of pumps means they have something for every type of rider, whatever bike they ride and however much money they wish to spend. This pump is £29.99 at the bottom of the price range. The digital gauge version of the same pump is around double the price. You can pay up to about £90 for one with a steel piston, alloy barrel, aluminium base, with a digital gauge and the new ABS2 chuck.