Not much going on with the Truck lately. Since we did Red Cone it's been to Denver and back for the supercruise in Golden and it's been parked. Waiting it's turn for some more fun. Coming up this weekend we are going to go play in some familiar territory outside of St. Elmo. It will be more of a family deal with my Jeep buddies, but we should have fun none the less. The wife is coming along too for her maiden voyage in the Camper. But first I need to address one nagging issue that popped up on the desert trip and the trip to Red Cone. That's with my onboard air system.
The Smittbilt compressor I have is up to the task now that I've got the correct size fuse for it, however the hose connection at the compressor was my next fail point. All that was there for an output on the compressor was a fairly short nipple for a hose to slide over. When I first put it together I used a higher pressure rating fuel injection style hose clamp on it. It held for most of the desert trip but as the compressor outlet heated up, the hose got softer and the clamp would be loose allowing the hose to pop off the nipple. I put a different clamp on it going into the Red Cone trip, but after the 2nd tire getting aired up, the hose got soft again and it popped off. I reattached it and cranked down the clamp with my electric 1/4" drive Matco impact, but it still ended up failing. I needed a new solution. One that would thread together and not be held with a hose clamp.
I'm certainly not the first to use this compressor this way and probably won't be the last so I surfed the web for a little while to find out a better way to fix it. Many Jeep forum (smittybilt is geared for jeepers for sure) posts indicated the use of a proprietary fitting for these units and no adaptation can be made. Well after digging a little more, this time in a Yota forum of all places it was discovered that it's not a unique proprietary fitting, but just a goofy metric fitting. Goofy because unlike standard 1/4" NPT fittings that are tapered, these are straight. Specifically, it's an M12x1.25 fitting. Amazon had the right metric male M12x1.25 to 1/4" female NPT fitting.
I picked up another hose whip for the connection between the compressor and tank the other day and threw it together tonight with an added twist. The end of the hose whip is also female, so I either needed a male/male union or get an extra quick coupler and threaded nipple and add the ability to disconnect the hose without tools. So I stopped and picked up the quick coupler and nipple (both males) and put it together with some Teflon tape. Besides allowing me to connect the two female fittings together, adding the disconnect allows me to bypass the tank completely if something fails. I can run my inflation hose directly off if the compressor if the need occurs. I like the added redundancy because of both trips before when the hose failed at the compressor I was down to needing to use a buddy's compressor to finish the job.
Pardon the dust, I haven't cleaned anything since the last trip and probably won't before this next one coming. But you can see the added hose connection point. I figured the quick coupler will add a little more surface area to dissipate heat as well.
I ran the system and topped off the tires in the process. System works. Plus I think I ended up fixing my connection at the tank that was the slow leak. The tank would hold air for a couple of hours, but would not hold it longer than that. My check valve didn't have any Teflon on it and the fitting wasn't tight.
