Why Aerostich Armored Textile Coveralls Exist

This story winds around a bit. The other day my younger brother, who’s a great vintage car lover, emailed me the link below which is to a story about how, during the great depression of the 1930’s, some ingenious fellow turned scrap Ford Model A four-cylinder auto engines into self-powered air compressors, and did pretty well selling them. Several patented conversion parts were involved. It’s a cool obscure story of someone making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

I replied to my brother:

“I didn’t know anything about these, either. Thanks for forwarding the story to me. Very cool. And believe-it-or-not, for many years we carried and sold an air compressor device that works on this exact same principle, and I’ve carried and used it. More than once. It’s called the ‘engineair’ pump, and it was listed in our catalog and on our website for many years but the company must have gone out of business (?) because it’s not there anymore. Attached below is an image file showing a scan of our 2016 main catalog, which shows it being available.” 

I continued writing: “One of these pumps right now is in the tool pouch located on the back fender of my 81 BMW R80gs, the one I kept in mom and dad’s garage in Arizona for many years. I bought that bike in AZ in about 1988 to ‘live’ in AZ, for use when visiting them, and to be able to ride to CA in the winter to visit with MC friends and motorcycle magazine editors there. That bike is now in dry storage in the basement of Molly and my home on PP.

"I rode this bike more than any other, about 300,000 miles over a 25-ish year period. And used this odd tire inflator several times. You’d screw it into one spark plug hole, then start the bike so it ran on one cylinder with the other end of the hose clamped on the tire’s inner tube valve stem. The bike sort of lumped along that way with the ‘enginair’ thing going ‘chuff chuff chuff chuff’ until the tube had good air pressure. I thought it was brilliant. Compact, light, and easy to carry. Also, very reliable. Today everyone carries (and we sell) tiny 12v electrical air compressors to do this same job. You plug them into a cigarette lighter socket or use clamps to the battery terminals. We sell one made for us to our specs, and it works well but probably isn’t as reliable as an ‘enginair’, and is bulkier to carry, too. Would not fit in the tool pouch on the back of that bike. I think I also have one of these enginair things stored on the gold hot-rodded BMW airhead which I also rode quite a lot off-and-on during that same period. Here is a link to a blog-post I wrote about using this tire inflator thing back in 2009 (it was posted to the blog in 2018). I think this was the last time it was used:  https://www.aerostich.com/blog/flat-tire-story/

"And lastly, I had a flat only a couple of weeks ago just south of Superior WI, where it goes from two to four lanes. Fixed it in the wayside rest there, much to the amusement and interest of others using this rest area at the time. But I used a bicycle tire pump to inflate, because the tool kit for this bike does not have one of these neat ‘enginair’ things. Photos attached. I have a flat about every fifteen years. This time the tire and tube were only a few weeks old.”

Next, I shared the above story with some riding friends like this: “Fellow Geezers, This is an email exchange between my younger brother and I, about a weird Ford model A engine compressor” and also by added by cc two Aerostich co-workers (Rick and Stephanie), with this request:  “See the image attached from our 2016 main catalog showing the ‘enginair’ pump. Any chance the company that made these still exists? Stephanie, any chance one or more of these might still be in stock somewhere?”

My cc’d riding friend Mark replied with: “Thanks Andy, I’d heard of the engineair compressor but never owned or had one. It’s fun to hear about the device again :). Hopefully Al will weigh in about how he turned a 'tube type' tire on his BMW into a 'tubeless' one upon having a flat on a rural road North of the Twin Cities, then rode home on it. Years ago, at Crown Auto (on the clearance table) I bought a compact 12 V tire pump kit which measures about 8”x8”x2.5”. I keep it in my truck along with a tire 'plug' kit. I've used it several times to fill a low tire and limp to the next gas station that had a decent air compressor (a rarity these days). When I used to travel on my 1966 Honda CL77 I always had a tire patch kit, tire irons and a skinny bicycle tire pump (which I still have) although the hose keeps rotting out after 50 years ??‍♂️. As a Boy Scout I was taught to 'Be Prepared'."

I replied to Mark: “Before cell phones everyone valued mechanical self-reliance a little more than they seem to today. And I know those who convert tube-type spoked wheels to tubeless using strong vinyl tape with a powerful modern adhesive have good results, but I’m not interested because the rim profile of a wheel designed for tube type tires is different than the rim profile of a wheel designed for use with tubeless tires. So even though it can easily be done, and lots of people have good results, I’m too cowardly to do it. But I’m not a complete coward when it comes to tire and wheel experiments. I’m a half-coward. Last winter I took a chance and rode all winter on a set of non-DOT ‘gummy’ trials tires. Very soft rubber compound and very thin sidewalls. These are special Trials-competition-only tires and they hooked into frozen pavement well when they were also ice cold, but I am not going to do this experiment again for several reasons. The experiment was interesting, but also was about like running non-DOT ‘wrinkle wall’ drag slicks on the street, underneath a hot rod car. Pretty stupid. But I thought it was worth a try. I wish there was a motorcycle tire with a compound about halfway between that of regular MC tires and those gummy trials tires. And with all its tread blocks siped with little wiggly grooves like modern snow tires for cars. I’d buy them. Can you imagine the guys at the tire company making those? They’d be jumping up and down saying to each other: 'Hey!!!  We sold TWO of those stupid winter motorcycle tires! To some idiot in Duluth Minnesota.  Let’s celebrate!  We’re going to clean up on that guy!' Nobody ever makes the stuff I want. Which is why Aerostich armored textile coveralls exist, I guess.”

Now you know why, too.

PS – If any of you know of a good soft compound DOT legal engineered ‘street’ snow tire for winter-ridden MC’s, please let me know. 

PPS - On motorcycles as on cars, tubeless tires are much better in so many ways. Many spoked wheels have been redesigned to allow the use of tubeless tires. High performance bicycles also now use tubeless tires. I wish my old Honda and Suzuki had such wheels. There is no super practical way to convert them, save using a special kind of strong adhesive vinyl tape where the rim strip would normally go to seal conventionally spoked wheels to work with tubeless tires. Even tough traditional spoked rims don’t have the correct cross-sectional profile for use with tubes tires, many off road riders have done this without encountering problems. At least in theory another way to use tubeless tires on an older bike with traditionally spoked wheels would be to build special wheels using the kinds of wheel rims designed to be used with tubeless tires. Even if custom modified spokes were not needed to accomplish this, if spokes simply building such wheels would be overly costly relative to the fairly low value of the older bike(s) these wheels might go on. In other words, who would spend $2,000+ (est) on a custom-made set of wheels for a bike worth only $2,000 only to avoid having to fix a tube flat once every five or ten years? Even if such wheels were built DIY, the time involved would be significant.  One’s time is worth something.  My newer (2007) 1200cc ’travel’ bike has tubeless tires. I carry a plug kit and an electric air pump under it’s saddle. Whenever it needs new tires they are dealer installed.  My car also uses tubeless tires. When manufactured it came with ‘run flats’ but now has ordinary tubeless tires.  After I switched to those I added a jack (to fit the OE jacking points), a plug kit and an air pump with an extended power cord, which so far I’ve never had to use.

PPPS – That clever made-in-USA enginair gizmo is no longer available. Everyone today uses the ubiquitous little Asian-made 12v compressors. If one wanted to split hairs, the old fashioned gizmo probably had a lower overall impact on climate warming, but now we are talking Amish/Hutterite/Mennonite (etc.) stuff.

- Mr. Subjective, Sept 17, 2022