[hypactiv1]

hey guys

what air compressors do ppl have and how much you pay I am in the market for a air compressor so advice would be good thanx guys


robbie

[Gwagensteve]

ARB twin piston.

About $520 or something from my closest ARB store.

Undoubtedly, hands down, the best way of getting 6.5cfm on your car.

If you ware willing to make the required bracketry, you might be able to get an endless air Sanden to deliver 9 cfm, but they're definitely more hassle to fit and more costly.

My compressor is under the driver's seat. I've pushed it hard enough to trip the temperature breaker, because you end up airing everyone up at the end of the day- I can air up four 35" tyres in the time it takes to air up one 31 with most other compressors.

I've had york piston compressors, the old ARB compressor, set up endless air compressors, and went with the twin piston based on cost vs convenience.

Steve.

[alien]

^^ agreed - i have the one piston ARB model for my airlockers and tyres and if it dies properly i'll replace it with the 2-banger.

with my 31's it takes about 3 seconds per 1psi increase (or there-abouts)... so from 10-25psi = 45 seconds, which now that i type it doesnt sound like long... but at the end of a days wheeling it feels like forever =) lol

[jimmy91]

I got a single motor arb it's fine untill you pump you mates 35's up lol

[woo603]

When you go get the tyres have a look at the set up on mine

[Scales]

I got the single piston ARB (not the locker only one). around 300-350 with the airup kit. Very happy with it, cant beat ARB ones for on-board mounting IMO. If you want a portable plug-in one, there is a larger variety out there to choose from.

[bazook]

http://www.tradetools.com/products/DC12-112 i have one of these its awesome and its a proper compressor with oiled crank

[Scales]

bazook wrote:

oiled crank

*snicker*


I'll show myself out.....

[SuziBlu]

I have a local bought chinese air comp, cost me 100, has done many hundreds of 31" tyres, am about to get a twin, found it on the net at agrmachinery, $79, 1 year warrenty.

I know you get what you pay for, but as most are made in china anyway, why bother with an expensive one, I get a $79 one, and even if it only lasts a year, till out of warrenty, I will have a new one for 8 years for the cost of an ARB one.

Look into it, most all push the same volume of air.

[sam_516]

Best you can get has never let me down

http://www.4wd1.com/Dr-Air-Pro-Flow.htm. A link to the tests on all the top air compressors and in different price ranges

No matter what one you choose tho don't mount it under the bonnet, compressors run better cold and keeps their life span longer

[Gwagensteve]

sam_516 Best you can get? really Might not be a bad compressor, but there's not enough data in that ad to make a call. It's also one of those "150" compressors were you're not really sure what they're talking about. Here's a link to an Ebay seller flogging them.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DR-AIR-PRO-F ... 859wt_1413

Their claim is the 150L/m (5.3 cfm) but then they claim a "an average 4x4 tyre (205/60R16) in around 2.5 minutes." with no word on pressures (a 205/60/16 an average 4WD tyre? That's tiny!). See how confusing it is? No mention of power consumption, no mention in the 4WD1 ad about how much faster it was than the competition - 1 second,., 10 seconds.. 5 minutes?... it's all so confusing.

SuziBlu wrote:

Look into it, most all push the same volume of air.

Some $79 compressors do push the same amount of air. If they're fast enough for you that's great. I'm not sure how they might go reseating a bead, but if that's not a problem for you then maybe you have the right tool for your job, but saying "most all" push the same amount of air is pretty misleading. There's lots of the same compressor out there in the market with different stickers on them.

It's pretty hard to "look into it" because there's no standard to measure their performance. The manufacturer can pretty much put whatever they like on the side of the box. The common one is to publish the free air output and then the maximum psi achievable, which is like posting the highway fuel economy of a car and its top speed in the same sentence. Pretty meaningless numbers. I don't pump up tyres at 0 psi or 150psi.

So, if you're going to "look into it" you'd really want to see flow figures under load, not just free air.

I'm going to suggest that current draw is a pretty good guide to the "real" performance of a compressor.

The tiny ARB air locker compressor consumes a maximum of 7.5A to deliver 0.7cfm @ 29 PSI
The ARB twin piston compressor consumes a maximum of 50A to deliver 4.68cfm @ 29 PSI

That's near enough 10A per cfm at load. There's no miracles there - most of the small compressors are going to run variations of the same motor, and they are going to deliver about the same bang for the buck.

some googling found these two ads (and many others like them):

For $79 you can have twin piston compressor that delivers 150l/m - that's 5.3CFM!!!!!

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-OUTBAC-1 ... 700wt_1413

Which is a good example of what I am saying about misleading ratings. There's all sorts of anecdotes about how fast it is:

Quote:

4WD Tyres from flat to 40PSI in around a minute

Quote:

inflating an average 4WD tyre in less than 60 seconds- and a car tyre quicker than you can blink!

Quote:

....10R.15 off-road tyre from 15-35psi in under a minute

Which of those is accurate I wonder?

Quote:

150l/m, 150PSI

150l/m is close to the 174l/m ARB claim for their twin piston compressor, so this $79 jobbie looks awesome, but there's no specs for a rating under load, except that it consumes 30A peak. The single piston high flow ARB compressor runs 25A and delivers 2.34cfm @ 29 psi, and my guess is the ebay compressor would do pretty close to that, maybe a little better, based on current draw and the times listed to inflate a 31. The single piston arb compressor is pretty good for 31's in my opinion, so maybe the $79 compressor isn't a bad buy if you have 31's.

And then there's this one for $190 that claims a measly 1.4cfm

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/400-Air-comp ... 444wt_1180

Goodness! why would anyone pay $190 for only 1.4cfm!

The specs tell the story though:

12-Volt DC
Duty cycle: 100% @ 100psi
Max working pressure: 200 psi
Amp draw: 23 amps
Fill a 31/10.5/R15 Tyre from 16 psi to 34 psi in well under a minute

Hang on... how can 1.4cfm pump up a tyre almost as quickly as 150l/m (5.3cfm)?

Because my guess is that 1.4cfm is at pressure, and I'm guessing at least 100psi, based on the rest of their data. It's certianly consuming enough power (23A) to go close to matching the ARB single piston compressor at 29psi, which it seems to perform about as quickly as.

So, do most compressors push the same volume of air? not really- there's lots of sub $100 compressors that have names with "150" in them etc that don't ho anywhere near the performance of those two I picked at random. 3-4 minutes for a 31 from 15-35 psi is looking like around 1cfm peak flow, but it depends on how you measure it. They're not all the same quality either, so you take a risk with a cheap brand or spend more and get something with some proper data and believable performance claims.

Steve.

[whincup]

i have a tigerz11 compressor. got lucky and got it second hand unused for $100... and hasn't let me down. pumps a 31" tyre from dead flat to 32psi in 2 minutes. not lightning fast speeds but pretty close to the speed of an ARB single piston compressor. and this one doesnt get anywhere near as hot. i wouldnt hesitate to buy one again

[BlueSuzy]

i have a $75 ebay double pumper. rattles abit but is fast.

that was when i used it 2yrs ago

might get an arb one to suit my lockers

[Chop]

I've got one of the old bushranger maxair compressors. Its 8 years old now and still going as strong as it was when new.
Its mounted under the bonnet of the gv now and even with the heat it still hasn't tripped the heat cut out switch.
I thought it was expensive back when I bought it at around $400. Doesn't look so expensive now

[atari4x4]

sam_516 wrote:

No matter what one you choose tho don't mount it under the bonnet, compressors run better cold and keeps their life span longer

my ARB compressor has lived in the engine bay for 4+ years in 2 different zooks & never had a problem.

[SuziBlu]

Steve, I never go past 22psi, so pressure is a pretty mute point. My single piston chinese brand that I use was fast enuf to reseat my brothers tyre when he broke the bead, so again, mute point.

You make a very valid point regards current draw, but, we now go into pressure.

IF one was to consider pressure as a point, and work upwards or over the 100psi mark, yes, "oils ait oils" but if you are just running low pressures, IMO why bother, my single piston is about 5 years old, now im on 33x13.5s I want something a bit faster, will be going a chinese brand again.

I have ARB singe piston air comp, but can see no real world diff at pumping tyres up.

[SuziBlu]

atari4x4 wrote:

sam_516 wrote:

No matter what one you choose tho don't mount it under the bonnet, compressors run better cold and keeps their life span longer

my ARB compressor has lived in the engine bay for 4+ years in 2 different zooks & never had a problem.

How on earth do you keep an engine bay that clean, crikey.

Mine are clean, but thats show condition.

[droverdave]

Perhaps a better discussion would be, who has had a cheap one fail? and how much did you use it before it failed?

[SierraDan]

I had a cheap one fail. It got about 3months of weekly use.

[SuziBlu]

My cheap single is about 5 years old, first 3 years of its life it copped a flogging, now im away from home 90% of the time, its a sitter, but for a while it was near daily, 31x10s

[atari4x4]

SuziBlu wrote:

atari4x4 wrote:

sam_516 wrote:

No matter what one you choose tho don't mount it under the bonnet, compressors run better cold and keeps their life span longer

my ARB compressor has lived in the engine bay for 4+ years in 2 different zooks & never had a problem.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r136 ... 9e029d.jpg

How on earth do you keep an engine bay that clean, crikey.

Mine are clean, but thats show condition.

It's easy, first off don't start with a dirty old shitbox & clean it after getting it dirty... It only had 86,000kms on it in that shot, now has 96 thou & it's still just as clean.

[Mike57]

Scales wrote:

I got the single piston ARB (not the locker only one). around 300-350 with the airup kit. Very happy with it, cant beat ARB ones for on-board mounting IMO. If you want a portable plug-in one, there is a larger variety out there to choose from.

x 2. Can't beat the ARB single piston for size and capability.

[Red89]

Chop wrote:

I've got one of the old bushranger maxair compressors. Its 8 years old now and still going as strong as it was when new.
Its mounted under the bonnet of the gv now and even with the heat it still hasn't tripped the heat cut out switch.
I thought it was expensive back when I bought it at around $400. Doesn't look so expensive now

I was given the small Bushranger one that looks like a football with legs as a freebie from 4Wd Action. And aside from being of average speed it happily pumped all day everyday for as long as I could have wanted it to. The only reason I replaced it was because the legs fell off it, however my brother in law now uses it and it is still going strong. For the average person who will only use the compressor once a fortnight or so, I dont see much point in spending around $600 on something just to save a minute or two.

[fordem]

droverdave wrote:

Perhaps a better discussion would be, who has had a cheap one fail? and how much did you use it before it failed?

A little google "research" will show that these are perhaps considered to be among the better of the cheap units on the US market, and there are several threads on "porting" them for increased performance.

I melted the fuse on the very first "test" use, inflating a single 27" tire - please note - not blew, melted - the fuse got hot enough to melt the plastic - a decent quality fuse fixed that, but the wiring is obviously too small as it heats rapidly, that too is an easy fix, but now you're starting to push the price up.

The piston ring (and I use that term loosely) is some sort of fabric secured to the piston crown by an alloy ring crimped in place - the crimps failed before it was ever used off road (all it ever did was the occasional flat tire in the drive way) - I've reassembled it and used a center punch to peen the alloy ring all the way around, after which it seems to function well - but do I trust it?

No.

[Ausuki]

I love "which air compressor" threads, it kinda like asking which beer is best,
every one knows its theirs.
I reckon its more important to consider what you need it to do.
do you need to inflate 35's and reseat beads every second weekend on club runs or do you want to air up your 225/75/15's 4 times a year when you go camping?

[SierraDan]

Inflate 35's EVERY weekend..

[Chop]

You dont need air in 35's on a sierra what are you noobs doing

[Ausuki]

SierraDan wrote:

Inflate 35's EVERY weekend..

EVERY weekend? you cant be going hard enough if you dont spend every 2nd weekend fixing stuff

[SierraDan]

Ausuki wrote:

SierraDan wrote:

Inflate 35's EVERY weekend..

EVERY weekend? you cant be going hard enough if you dont spend every 2nd weekend fixing stuff

I guess not..

[31zook]

My double pumper $100 special has been going hard for 2yrs now. Its always falling apart, and the filter cracked off of it last I used it...

But my ARB (single piston) compressor I have under my passengers seat is good also. Much better quality and was free-ish with my lockers...