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I love tubeless, but getting a tubeless tyre to inflate and stay seated on a tubeless compatible rim can be tricky. Often this is simply because you can't get air into the tyre quickly enough. The Airshot makes inflating even the most stubborn tubeless tyre a painless exercise, with a sudden and rapid flow of air that seats a tyre first time every time. It is a little expensive for a product that ultimately you might not use a lot, though.

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The Airshot is basically just a metal canister with a hose on the top that you attach a track pump to and another hose that you attach to the valve on the wheel. Use the track pump to fill the canister with 100-120psi of air, flick the lever, and hey presto, watch as the air rushes into the tyre and inflates it in an instant.

Pump it, flick the switch and release the air

Sometimes a tubeless tyre will inflate on the rim first time, using a track pump. Other times, no amount of frantic pumping or swearing will do it. There are a few tricks that can help when the tyre won't inflate: using an inner tube to get one tyre bead seated, adding a layer of Gorilla tape to take up any slack in the tyre, or using a compressor. Few people have a compressor to hand, though.

In the instances when the tyre is being stubborn, the Airshot worked a treat. I tried it on a fat Schwalbe mountain bike tyre that was refusing to inflate with a track pump, and it went straight up first time. The Specialized tubeless cyclo-cross tyres a bike I tested recently required a bit of jiggery-pokery with a track pump, but the Airshot did the trick first time too.

Attahch pump here....

The Airshot is compatible with Presta valves. Sometimes one trick to seating a tubeless tyre is to remove the tubeless valve inner core. Airshot handily provides a valve accessory that screws into the vacated space inside the valve, and simply allows a quicker flow of air into the tyre.

So, the Airshot does exactly what it sets out to do. It's a product that might not get a lot of use, but when you do come to use it you'll probably be thankful you bought it. You still need a track pump, though. For another £50, you could invest in the Bontrager TLR Flash Charger track pump, which at least gives you a regular track pump the rest of the time. But having to pay £100 just to inflate a tubeless tyre does seem rather ridiculous. Back to sweaty angry pumping then...

Get air into the tyre with or without the valve core

If you've got a fleet of bikes (lucky you) with tubeless tyres on the majority of them, the Airshot is an extremely useful product to have in your home workshop. I don't always need anything other than a track pump to seat a tubeless tyre, though, and I've learned a few tricks over the years.

Alternatively, and to head off any comments, you could make your own, Blue Peter-style, from an old cola bottle, but I wouldn't really recommend it. I used a friend's homemade tubeless inflator once and it nearly took my head off.

The Airshot has come down in price recently to £49.99, no doubt this is in conjunction with the fact that the company have teamed up with a tyre manufacturing giant, to offer the  Schwabe Tyre Booster which is priced at, yes you guessed it: £49.99. 

Buy at www.airshotltd.com (link is external)