Because Rita wanted to get cycling as soon as possible (she has been on her bike all the time in Bern), we decided to go out to the storage shed on the edge of town this morning to pick up the bicycles. The aim was for her to ride her bike home while I put mine in the back of the Scenic. However, when we got there, the tyres were flat (not unexpected after 6 months of non-use). We eventually found our little pump in the saddle bag on my bike, but when we tried to use it we could not get it to attach to the valve on the tyre. So we decided to bring hers home in the Scenic and work on it at home. We knew that the pump could handle both types of valve (the Presta needle valve and the square Schrader valve), and that one simply had to reverse something inside the pump to switch. It was set up for a needle valve (someone must have changed it while we were away) and no amount of “reversing” could get it to work.

So we decided to buy another larger pump from InterSports (having a strong feeling that we had already bought one last year), on our way to Fronton to have lunch with Loys and his sister Laurie and mother Brigette. This turned out to be a great day, with lots of eating, drinking and chatting. As usual, Massa was the centre of attention, regularly swapping laps with just about everyone there. Rita and i left around 1800h, since we had to get some shopping done before the shops closed for Sunday, but we later heard that the party got a second wind and went on till about 2300h!

When we got home, we settled down to pump the bicycle tyres with the new pump, only to find it was also set up for a Prestia needle valve. While the packaging said it was reversible, once again we couldn’t find the way to reverse it, and the diagrams on the packaging were not all that explanatory. So now we had two bike pumps, small and big, that didn’t seem to want to work on our Schrader valves.

So, after Rita gave up in disgust, I sat there concentrating on the big pump in one hand and the packaging instructions in the other - I wasn’t about to let a bike pump defeat me!

After about half an hour, the penny dropped. It was clear that one had to remove the grey knurled knob in order to switch from one valve to another. However, removing this knob did not show anything that could be reversed. All that showed was a silver button inside a black plastic casing. However, I eventually realised that this silver button had to be on the other side to engage with the lever that swung through 90degrees when attaching the pump to the valve. I then started hitting this fitting on the edge of the table and realised that slowly the silver button and the plastic casing were emerging from a very tight fit inside the outer casing (see third photo below). Eventually, the entire cylindrical casing emerged, with a silver button on one end and a brass needle on the other. I then reversed this cylinder and put it back in the outer casing, with the silver button at the back (to engage with the lever) and the brass needle at the front (to depress the spike inside the Schrader valve). Solved!!

Emboldened by my success with the big pump, I decided to tackle the small pump. Undoing the knurled knob at the head of this pump revealed a rubber cylinder that, unlike the big pump, did come out easily. But reversing it did not enable the pump to be used with the Schrader valve. As I sat there thinking about it and twiddling with the rubber cylinder in my fingers, I thought I detected some movement between the two ends of the cylinder. Further investigation showed that it indeed was made up of two parts. Reversing the part on the left (below), and joining it to the other end of the part on the right, gave a new cylinder which when inserted back into the pump head enabled the pump to be used with the Schrader valve.

Both solutions were all so obvious (nearly) in hindsight, but I have documented them fully here, so that next year I will have somewhere to turn to to remember how I fixed them this year.

It’s amazing how much better a beer and peanuts taste after solving a major technological problem.