Q Industries MF-1035 Masterflow Santa Ana 12 Amp Tire Inflator

What a beautiful unit! Well built, flashy color, good air hose quality, long DC power cord, nice carrying case. And quiet! Oh so, so quiet. Wait, that's because it_doesn't_work. It wasn't the fuse, just a bum unit I guess. I'll give it a different star rating when I receive one that actually turns on. :)Update 3/1/11: Amazon came through with a replacement unit. It works great; inflates car, snowblower and handtruck tires very quickly. Bicycle tires (65psi) took several minutes and it does struggle a bit. There is a warning in the instructions about the metal parts getting hot - heed it! After using it for 10 minutes, the green metal parts are way too hot to touch. Love the brass screw-on fitting; leaving the unit running both as you connect it and as you disconnect it does the trick. Kudos!

First of all I won't be using this tiny compressor for filling vehicle tires or spray painting my house. But it works perfectly for my intended purposes: 1) adjusting air pressure on my ATV (4-5 psi), 2) blowing up my air mattress for camping, and 3) blowing off all the water on my GoPro camera's waterproof housing before opening the case and retrieving the camera. This is extremely important to prevent any water from getting inside the housing which then can fog up during use or damage the camera. The very small form factor allows me to take this on the fishing boat and plug into the 12 volt system on the boat for use whenever needed. This is so much better than dabbing with paper towels and hoping to soak up all the water in the O Ring seam on the housing before opening. I've used it a few dozen times now for all the above purposes and have no complaints or regrets. This thing was only $19 and free shipping by Amazon so I couldn't go wrong. Realize that I'm using this compressor at atmospheric pressure with little to no back pressure on it so it performs perfectly for these conditions. Would buy again. The extra supplied nozzles allow use as a blow gun, filling sports balls like soccer, basketball and footballs, filling beach balls, air mattresses, and inner tubes, as well as filling vehicle tires (with patience).

Compressor worked for a little while, but developed a short circuit that keeps blowing fuses. Could probably look for it, but why bother if the build quality is this crappy?

I've owned many 12v pumps over the years. The noisier kinds tend to be gear driven with small, fast DC motors. The quieter ones tend to use larger, slower, direct drive motors. casings vary.This is a large-motor, direct drive, single cylinder compressor. The design itself is rather nice-- thick metal casing, insulated (air gap) carry handle. nice hose.However the quality is dubious. gaps in the plastic end-caps allow visibility of the connecting rod, and hence ease of dirt contamination to the vital seals in the cylinder/piston. The metal appears to be very soft-- which is probably why it's so thick. I would not expect for this device to last more than an hour or so of accumulated use.I don't mind, as the twenty-three dollar cost is fine for it-- you get what you pay for. However, knowing this, I would never consider any of the pricier Q Industries products.

The pump is heavily built (4.3lbs) with brass fittings and a removable hose with a threaded fitting equipped with a finger fluted removal wheel. The hose is good quality with an embedded fiber wrap (unlike the plastic/rubber-only hoses on cheapie pumps) - should take a lot of abuse. As these little pumps go, this is quiet with a smooth solid sound. It pumps a lot of air (0.75 cfm) and it has a long cycle time before it heats up and needs a rest (15min). That translates into being able to fill pretty big automotive tires without pause. Max pressure is 120psi with 90psi restart pressure. I use it to air up 2.5" bike tires, and it does the job PDQ.The gauge face has a printed claim of relatively poor accuracy (10% error across the board) and is correct - my gauge is not good, but this accuracy probably varies from unit to unit. That said, an accurate gauge would cost as much the whole pump, so no big surprise there - it's exactly as claimed. Importantly, gauges tend to be consistently inaccurate so after one fill to learn the proper 'incorrect' gauge reading for my target fills, there was no problem getting the proper fills in spite of the inaccuracy. Honestly, gauge accuracy cannot be an issue at this price point - what matters is the rest of the pump - that's why you have a tire gauge.Overall, short of disassembling the thing and inspecting the works, the pump looks, feels, sounds, and performs like good quality construction. Frankly, I would have expected twice the price for such a solid unit.UPDATE:Although the supplied hose assembly is well made and good quality, my primary use is for filling bike tires so I replaced it with a Sunlite Twinhead Pump Hose Kit, 860mm, Black which has a dual Schrader/Presta head with quick release lever. The head has a 90 degree feed and so fits easily between the spokes. I cut away the swaged hose clamp, carefully removed the provided hose from the fitting without nicking the barb, and just pushed the new silicone hose onto the barb - snug fit, no clamp required. An easier strategy is to cut the exiting hose and use a standard two-barbed hose splice. This would also give a longer hose if that's important to you.18 months of regular use and the pump is still humming along quietly and the new hose/filler head is super easy to install/remove with no air loss. Together these are a quick way to air up any tire at the trail head regardless of the valve type.

This is a great product. Even though the advertising says it's for a car, it pumps up SUV tires just fine. The built-in gauge is quite accurate. This model is cheaper and quieter than the HV35 model. Yes, some reviews that say that the pump gets too hot is accurate, but there is plenty of insulated parts, such as, the handle and the rubber base, that you can hold and not get burned. The compact carrying case and the entire box fits into car compartments well. I love the screw-on air hose tip. I didn't give it a 5 star because I haven't had it that long and few reviews said that it break after several months or after several uses. I'll find out whether they are right.