compressor for tyres?

Hyndsite,
I think Endless Air market an A/C compressor for pumping tyres, and it is supposed to be very good.
Not sure of the lubrication issues if using one of these compressors, as in an A/C application, the lubricant (special) actually circulates thru the system with the gas. Obviously not possible in an open system.
Can anyone else shed further light on this?
Gerry

Endless Air fit a grease nipple to the bearing, paint them and charge $385 I think. You can get your own Saden 508 and then modify a A/C dryer on the discharge to act as an oil seperator with a drain back to the suction of the compressor. Unfortunately, I am not sure what the exact mods to the a/c dryer are, I bought one already made from a bloke in Warrigal in Vic. Or add your own grease nipple to the a/c comp. Keep the grease up to it and no probs. Have a look at the Endless Air add and you will see where the grease nipple goes. Hope this helps.

Yes, that is it exactly

I have done this conversion and rapt with the results. It pumps air as fast as a servo compressor....will inflate a 16" forby tyre from flat to 40 psi in about a minute. It has enough capacity to run a rattle gun and air tools easily. Couple of problems though. 1st is heat. We had to use high pressure a/c hose and fittings to a decent sized tank to cool the air, otherwise it just blew holes in conventional air hose. 2nd is lubrication. We tapped a grease nipple into the drain plug and filled it with high temp grease. The air intake, I tapped into the oil breather return line, where it joined the engine air intake (behind the air filter), so it is sucking in filtered air and presumably getting some oil vapor from the engine. Don't know if this is the correct way of doing it, but the pump has inflated at least 100 car, truck and tractor tyres, plus kids toys, and run air tools. It is used frequently and not shown any mercy, without failing. A couple of mates have also used the same setup. One pump failed very quickly...probably faulty, but since then all three have worked well. One bloke used to carry a large petrol driven compressor on the back of his work ute for truck and tractor tyres, and now just uses the a/c compressor. A word of warning if making one of these compressors...they develop very high pressures extremely quickly. You need a good pressure switch and a safety blow off valve. When the pressure switch was bypased, mine reached 140 psi in 10 secs, before the safety valve went off (loudly). Frightened the shysters out of me the first time. I'm told the a/c compressors will go over 1000 psi. Don't know if that's correct, but I wasn't going to take the chance. The bits-n-pieces needed to build this will cost about the same as the best 12v pump on the market, but it will leave the 12v job for dead. It took 3 days of fiddling around to install and get it to work properly. I don't think I would pay $395 for an Endless Air one, when you can by a 2nd hand compressor from the wreckers for $25. Would I go back to a 12v compressor? No way.

Hyndsite, it's been almost 2 years since I put the compressor in, and I got some help from a mate who's a mechanic and a/c mechanic...ok I'll be honest he did most of the work. I don't recall draining the oil from the compressor, just tapped a grease nipple in and pumped it full of grease. The air output has an oily smell to it, so I believe it is getting some lubrication from the engine oil as well. What we did was purely trial and error and I think we got lucky because it has done many hours work. The one area we had a real problem was heat. I lost count of the number of air hoses we blew out. I tried no tank - no good. We tried a converted 1.1 kg fire extinguisher - better, but still blew hoses. We then added a 2nd tank (2 - 3 litres) and this works well. The other two blokes used 2nd hand air tanks off a truck, around 10 litres and this worked really well. It smoothed the whole operation out with the compressor cycling in and out nicely. As for the bit-n-pieces, I grabbed a compressor that best fitted into the engine bay from the mate's pile of dead ones. Sorry, I don't recall the brand. We put new bearings and clutch into it, and a heap of grease. We then installed the tanks as far away from the compressor as possible to let the air cool, using high pressure a/c hose and fittings. From there I used an assortment of brass air fittings to fit in the pressure switch and safety pressure relief valve. We set it up so the moisture would drain away from the tank and could be released easily. After this a hose went from the tank to the bullbar, where I plumbed in a snap in hose fitting. The compressor is switched on by a toggle switch in the cabin, much the same as a conventional air conditioner. The pressure switch cycles between 70 - 110 psi. The relief valve is adjustable and set at 140 psi. Included in my costings were 20 metres of air hose with fittings, tyre inflator, gauge and blower. If you want to leave your email, I'm happy to send some photos. Cheers Ferris

there is about 1000 threads on it.

also google for endless air.

i use a york (ford and others used em these and rebadged) compressor for compressed air in my shed/workshop....works great and it has been in use for some 20 yrs or so.

all one needs to do is check the oil once and a while...well your supposed to any way...might get around to it one of these days