AIRE Hurricane Heavy Duty 12 volt pump with battery clamps
Overview
Reliable and quick inflation for you raft or kayaks
Our other 12 volt inflator aside from the lower volume Bravo MB80 is the Hurricane. This unit blows a slightly higher volume of air than the Bravo, and at higher pressure - 1.5 p.s.i. to 1.8 p.s.i. depending on your boat's valves. This means you won't have to do much topping off at all. There was one other pump that did as well pressure-wise, and blew even more air, and that would be the now-discontinued LVM, but those were never all that reliable and they were always pricey since they were made in England.
This pump stands up by itself, and comes with four adapters, including one that seems to work for about 80% of the valves out there. The hose is a bit too short for many applications. Your local hardware store sells various (spa & Tygon) tubing by the foot in the rope & chain section, so you can retrofit the Hurricane with something longer if you wish. A 5' piece of garden hose also works well. The Hurricane uses battery connectors for under your hood, not a cigarette lighter plug. We realize that it is getting harder to even find the battery on many newer cars, but the connection is stronger with battery clamps compared to the often unreliable lighter jacks.
- The box this Hurricane come in does NOT say "AIRE" or "Hurricane" on it. It is a generic looking orange & beige box (though those colors could change at some point down the road) that simply says, "Quick High Pressure Electric Pump". No, we did not send you the wrong pump. Our guess is that the factory wants enough extra money to do custom printing on the box that it would raise the cost of the pump by at least a few dollars, maybe more.
- As a somewhat confusing aside, Man of Rubber also uses the name Hurricane for their 120 high volume commercial inflators, though those are multi-hundred dollar products that most of us old timers still refer to by their original moniker, the "Piglet", so named for their appearance.
- Second, on the subject of those words "High Pressure": This unit will not blow up inflatable stand-up paddle boards past maybe 1.7 or 1.8 p.s.i., and ditto for high pressure drop-stitch inflatable kayak floors or side walls. In other words, it is entirely the wrong pump for those products. There are many two-stage inflators on the market, i.e. 12 volt models that have both a low-pressure turbine pump and a high pressure piston pump all inside one body, with a switchover mechanism. The Hurricane is a straight turbo-only pump. And because it's output pressure is a max of 1.8 psi, the Hurricane will not blow through most poppet stem valves when they are in the "closed/inflate" position. You need to leave them in the open/deflate mode, since many of the modern valves - especially the Tributary kayak Summit, and the Halkey Roverts brand valves - have very stiff poppet springs, and no air will go into your boat if they are in the closed position using this inflator. All you will do is overheat the pump and burn it out. The warranty does not cover this either, so be aware.