Product news: With the milKit Booster, two inventors from Switzerland want to make the often tricky tubeless installation easier. The portable air storage replaces a compressor and will be available for less than €40. Funding is currently being provided through Kickstarter. If the goal is reached, the first finished milKit boosters will be sent out in February 2018.
Tubeless tires have now firmly established themselves in the mountain bike sector and, at least in terms of performance, are powerful competitors for the good old butyl tubes. A sentence that is often heard regarding tubeless systems: "Once they are installed and sealed, everything is great!" - Only the way there is often rocky and sometimes gets on the nerves of beginners and professionals alike. Does the tire fit the rim well? Does the tubeless milk work as desired? Could the valves be a problem? And last but not least: How do I get the tire onto the rim with home remedies so that it is sealed in the end? And how does the system remain tight in the long term?
It is precisely these often annoying tubeless problems that the two inventors and passionate bikers Pius Kobler and Sven Rizzotti have taken on and founded the company milKit. It all started last year with special tubeless valves that make tire inflation and maintenance much easier. Now you follow suit and take on what is perhaps the biggest problem during assembly: If you don't have the luxury of having a compressor in the workshop, you often have great difficulty, depending on the tire-rim combination, in opening the tire with the floor pump at all to get the rim.
The problem is as old as tubeless technology and so it is not too surprising that there are now also some aids from larger manufacturers: There are, for example, special floor pumps with an air reservoir that can be emptied suddenly in order to use this blast of air to pump the flanks into the to press horn. Air reservoirs, which can be filled with the floor pump, pursue the same goal. However, the latter are usually large, unwieldy and quite expensive.
The approach of the new milKit Booster is similar: a portable air reservoir that can be filled with a simple floor pump and has enough power to let the tire 'pop' into the rim. The Difference: The milKit Booster is small, very easy to use and affordable. In principle, it is a drinking bottle made of aluminum with a special attachment. It can be filled and 'discharged' like a tire without additional hoses or adapters. Nice side effect: With a corresponding attachment, the booster can also be used as a drinking bottle.
The milKit Booster is financed via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. A week after the start of the campaign, more than half of the targeted financing goal of CHF 30.000 has already been raised. You have until November 2nd to achieve this goal. Anyone who pre-orders the booster via the Kickstarter campaign – €36 for the small version, €39 for the large version – will be one of the first to receive it in February 2018.
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