Silca Pista Floor Pump

The Pista Floor Pump is the ideal pump for race-day tyre inflation – super tough, accurate and with the single foot easier to pack in a bag. Ultra high-quality Silca floor pump with heavy steel barrel precision gauge and single foot design to offer compact yet powerful tyre inflation.

In 2017, Silca took all of the qualities of the original Pista and introduced a re-engineered, limited-edition version of the pump with the iconic Molteni orange barrel to celebrate 100 years in business. These modern orange pumps were initially meant to be a limited-release product to celebrate the Silca heritage, but the positive response and demand for the product have continued.  As they're now in their second century of making high-performance pumps, the Pista is now part of their permanent floor pump line-up and is offered in a modern red livery moving forward.

The modern Pista preserves the beautiful aesthetics of the original but improves on the design in some very important ways. The gauge has been updated to a much higher precision; the handle is a reincarnation of the original but is now made with Ashwood instead of Bakelite, and the steel barrel and piston shaft are upgrades in quality and durability from the original.

History of the Pista

At the request of Fausto Coppi's mechanics in the late 1950's, the team at Silca set out to design a pump that would take the best attributes of each style of pump and combine them into one. The result, launched in 1962, was a design so elegant and timeless that it came to define the entire category of 'Track Pumps' ('Pista' is Italian for 'track' after all.) The original Pista paired a steel barrel with a 3mm thick leather piston washer, solid brass internal valves and the now iconic oval handle with two grooves for holding the hose that allowed the pump to lay flat in a travel bag or in the trunk of a car. These pumps were prized by professional mechanics around the world for their durability, dependability and accuracy.

With the launch of the new Pista, Silca has tried to capture the magic of the original while continuing to improve function and durability. This Pista upgrades the original Celluloid handle to a more classic lathe turned Ashwood and upgrades the chuck assembly to include Presta and Schrader compatibility plus a new bleed button to make chuck removal easier. They have also upgraded to a 3% accurate gauge fully protected in an aluminium base housing. Additionally, self-lubricating internal guide surfaces have been added to make it smoother running and more efficient than any pump before. 

What hasn't changed are the critical components that make Silca pumps so durable and dependable. This Pista uses a 3mm thick leather piston washer and solid brass internal valve assembly which have been produced in the same factories in Milan, Italy since 1947. These critical components are the heart of the pump and have demonstrated more than 70 years of flawless performance under the harshest conditions so it only seems fitting that Silca continues to use them.