Most people know the Porter Cable brand for the woodworking and / or trade tools that they produce. We’ve sung the praises of their routers and drills for years. And they have a pretty nifty plate joiner that we’ll be doing a review on very soon as well, but when you think of Porter Cable, you don’t necessarily think of Automotive or Outdoor, but they have one tool that falls under both headings. It’s the 18V Inflator and it can be powered by either the Porter Cable 18V NiCad or Lithium-Ion batteries, so if you already have some tools in the line, you are ready to go.
Automotive:
You would use the high pressure inflation hose for vehicle tires. In addition to being able to run off of the 18V battery, the inflator also has a 10’ DC cord that plugs into your 12V power adapter, which is plenty of length for you to be able to reach all of your tires. And the cord conveniently wraps around the base of the inflator and the adapter fits snuggly in a slot on the bottom. Since you don’t want your 18V battery to reach the high temperatures the inside of a vehicle often reaches, then the DC power cord is a must if you plan to leave this in your car, even if just to go on a road trip.
Once you’ve chosen a source of power, you attach the high pressure cable to the valve stem on your tire and then push the power button to the right, and you’ll notice immediately that it reads the pressure of the tire. Now, Porter Cable claims that it has accuracy of +/- 1 PSI @ 100 PSI. Since I don’t have any fancy scientific gadgets to prove that true or false, the only way I could test this was to put it up against a good old fashion tire gauge. And, it was exceptionally accurate. It read 40 PSI on the digital gauge on the Porter Cable Inflator and exactly the same on the pencil type tire gauge. One feature that I like is the automatic shut off feature. Once set, the inflator will turn off when it reaches the desired pressure. That takes a lot of the guesswork out. The high pressure hose stores neatly in an opening on one end of the inflator.
Alternate Uses:
In addition to using the high pressure hose for tires on your vehicles, you can also inflate bicycle tires, and balls like footballs and basketballs. If you want to inflate an air mattress or an exercise ball, you’ll want to use the high volume hose. And just in case you were wondering, the two hoses are marked very clearly on the inflator. You will not confuse the two. The high volume hose stores in the opening on the opposite end of the inflator, and you just take it out and attach it to the high volume pump inflate connector on the top of the inflator and push the power button to the left. You’ll be inflating in no time. Another plus? You can switch to high volume deflation for quick storage of your air mattress or other items that usually take you years to get flat enough to roll up or put away.
There are several accessories (for pool floats, bicycle tires, etc.) in different sizes that store on the back of the unit, specifically in the handle. This is the one thing that I think could be a negative to the tool. While, I’m thrilled to have all the accessories, and it’s imperative that there is storage, I think the pieces are hard to remove and put back in place in the handle, and there’s a high probability they’ll eventually get lost. I would have preferred they put them in a compartment.
Overall, I like this tool. I feel sure I’ll find a lot of different uses for it. Without the battery it sells for about $50 (at the time of this post).
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