another Snag!! could use some advice!!!!

[Ck1500]

Well i have been working alot on the Blazer as of lately, see "Operation Holy Rust" in the body shop, and been putting in quite a bit of hours at work also. so i get home today and head out to the garage. to do some more metal fab work, and i was busy doing my thing, and had to use the Air Cut-off tool, started cutting away, and noticed my Air Compressor wasnt comming on yet, so i stopped and walked over to it. its a Porter Cable 60 Gallon, 7Hp decent sized unit, and i have had it for about 10 years now. and the compressor came on just as i got up to it, so i thought no biggie back to work, went back to cutting for about 5 minutes and stopped, noticed garage was full of smoke!!!! and not cutting or grinding debris flying around. ran over to compressor just in time to hear the great sound of a rod knock in it. shut it off. and tore it apart "after cooling down of course" and yes its toast. so i remember seeing a replacement pump from Harbor Freight, so i went up there and found it. for 94 bucks. and brought it home, read instructions and removed from box, OMG this thing is HUGE! so i removed my old pump and set the new pump on it. started to figure out what i needed to install it on my current setup. list was some angle iron stock to extend my motor mounts out, a different pulley because the one on the new pump was a 4L style and it was double also, new belt, new oil, and all the plumbing parts, 1/2" compression fittings, to the 3/4 flare thats on the new pump. needless to say after running around town, and locating all the correct stuff at Home Depot, and i walked past a 60gallon 3.7 hp compressor for 400$ then it hit me.. should i be putting all this time and effort into this Harbor Freight FrankenStein machine? or purchase a new one. and have a warranty and alot less labor involved.

wife wants me to buy the new one. and i think i am going back tommarow after work to return all the stuff i bought to make the HF one work. and purchase it.
my thoughts were possibly using my old tank for storage and routing the new compressor into the old tank, is this a bad idea? i know i will have to rework some things on it. but i thought wow 120 gallons of air, that would be HUGE! but will it kill the new one sooner, make it work harder? i know i have to break the new one in, and change oil after like 30 minutes.

any advice would be greatly appreciated guys!!! you have yet to steer me wrong!

thanks
Ck1500

 

[Desert Rat]

Just buy a new one and make it larger than you think you will need. I have a Sears compressor I've also had now for about 20 years and I started hearing the sound of air leaking the other day when I wasn't using the tools. I pulled it out, cleaned it up, and found that there was a hole that had rusted through the actual tank on the bottom. Seems some of the condensation inside the tank ate through the bottom and made a pinhole. I was going to grind the paint off and weld the hole shut but for some reason it sealed itself after using it for a while. I thought about still just welding it up but I'm realizing that this is a valuable tool that I use a lot. I will just buy a new one and chalk the old one up to having reached its end of life. The new ones are pretty slick with a lot of new features that the old style ones don't have anyway.

 

[dhcomp]

I will just buy a new one and chalk the old one up to having reached its end of life. The new ones are pretty slick with a lot of new features that the old style ones don't have anyway.

Good decision. Welding on pressure vessels is a bad idea.

 

[cybrfire]

Personally I wouldn't hook the old tank into the new compressor. In the end, all it will do is make your compressor work longer/harder. Pumps, tanks, motors, pulley sizes and CFM ratings all play together to make your compressor do what it is advertised to do.

 

[Fordum]

I saw an air tank blow once because no one had kept it drained with the fitting on the bottom.
So when I get called to do some consulting work at a shop, I wander out to the compressor shack, and if the do not have the automatic drains on them, most big shops do, I make it a point to drain them.

I have seen some bad stuff come out of those drains.

 

[Fordum]

Adding the tanks, is a tossup. It will increase the life of your motor, starting is the biggest strain on them, and starting too often will burn one up. Of course, that should not be a problem with the one tank unless you are using a lot of air.
As for the pump, its hard to say.
Once it fills the tanks up, it should not run any longer total than with one tank. Just not as often.
When the large tank shines is when your compressor is too small for what you are running and can't keep up.
The larger tank will let you run your equipment longer, and maybe long enough to finish the job without have to wait on the air.

The thing to remember is, if you use, say 200 cubic feet of air, it will take that pump as long to replace it whether the tank is big or small.
Its just that the bigger tank will let you use a lot more cubic feet before the pressure switch calls for air. So the pump will run longer when it comes on, but at the end of the day, the length of total run time will be the same.

J.

 

[Blaze]

If you are running a 3.7hp motor on a 60gal, don't bother to add the second tank to it. That engine will work like hell to keep two tanks going.