Aldi compressor

I bought a cheap ebay item a few years ago (twin piston 150L/min) and I have used it heaps over those years its done some heavy work and pumps three vehicles in succession back up to pressure without doing the old heat cut out thing.
I reckon its luck of the draw if you 1st look closely at the specs of what your buying
Even the so called good brands let you down look at the bees knees waeco fridges, good brand sure but do a search and see how many people have had them give problems on their trip.
Also got an ebay 12000lb winch thats seen some work too.
I'll stick with the cheaper but not nasty type thanks but my advice to those that chose this is if you do that you should have an aray of recovery gear not putting all your eggs in one basket and its always a good idea to travel with another and/or have sat phone and gps and that goes for brand name stuff as well.

P.S. It's even been used by other folk who's 'brand name/ expensive' compressors have let them down !!!!

thats what I recon but not being able to buy 50amp fuses seemed like to much risk. I had heard good reports about them but maybe the new batch are not as good.

cheers Rick.

Rick & Kerry

i bought one from Ebay......is exactly the same as the dearer brand(even has the same numbers on it) and it hasnt let me down yet.

cheap ones or dear ones....chances are they all come from the same factory anyway?
cheers.

Recovery vehicle? – around here the girls use them as shopping trolleys :-)

maybe two 25 amp fuses in parallel would fix the problem of a 50 amp fuse. if it is blowing fuses then there's a fault and you did the right thing in returning it. i have a super cheap one and it has yet to let me down, it's well looked after.

cheers

G'day. Jusy picked up one of these compressors from Aldi today. Not a real problem with it other than the pressure relief valve was sticking a little and were over inflating the tyre (test run). Also didn't come with any spare fuses as suggest in the add. I think they could have done a little better with the relief valve. Oddly enough, I did see what appeared to be a 50A fuse which seemed to be an overkill for a DC permanent magnet motor, (just put the metal coupling against it & it sticks). I decided to clamp my ammeter on the line and ended up with the following results:

Start current around 10A to 14Amps.
Run current 0.9A to 1.0A

I just wonder whether the inline fuse is a slow blow 5A fuse and not a 50A one. Having a look @ the fuse, the eutectic point seems a little thin to me for it to be 50A fuse.

Either way the easy solution would be to replace the existing fuse with either:
- A fuse that is readily available (slow blow)(fuse & fuse holder)
- A thermal circuit breaker
- A thermal magnetic circuit breaker, (provides good short cct & overload)
- A solid state circuit breaker (similar to thermal magnetic)

Either way i intend to dispense of the inline fuse and put in its place a thermal magnetic circuit breaker if i can find one; has good short circuit and over-current protection which takes into account ambient temperatures, (dispense of fuses totally). As far as thermal cut out goes i'd most likely fit a N/C thermal switch somewhere on the case or inside the connector box if it doesn't have one. Also probably chop up the air line and put something a little better.

I wouldn't leave it in the rain as someone suggested as it has a breather hole on the top to one side i think for the motor to cool down. Mine was covered with a little bit of plastic that quality control probably missed, (that is if they have QC), someone might want to check theirs just in case.

Overall i don't think it's a bad little compressor for the price, i can't really complain. It has a duty cycle of 50% (30min on/off), haven't pulled it apart yet so cant comment on it's internals or its metallurgy.

I would personally rate this compressor 7/10 at the moment. Mainly because the pressure relief valve was sticking and i think they could have done a little better with the gauge even if they had to charge a little extra for it. Quality control was also another factor but to a lesser extent (i personally wouldn't rate a missing spare fuse and a bit of plastic wrap on the air vent a huge issue), otherwise i would have personally rated it a 7.5/10, for quality and price.

Thats what I think, it seems the current one is different from an earlier model they sold.
The fuse is built in in the line from he batterie and is the standard blade size, so not available in 50amp. Having to change something as basic as the fuse system to meet local standards doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the rest of the unit.

Cheers Rick

Rick,

I have just pulled my Aldi compressor out and it is a Torque automotive product code 2345.


It has a 30 amp in line blade fuse (normal size not the mini one).

I have been at a 4wheel drive club sand driving weekend and compared mine side by side with several others who had bought an ARB compressor. They were the same in every detail except for the label, same carry case, broucher everything except the logo.

The only problem I found and the ARB compressor was the same, in that the hose was just a bit short making it hard to reach the rear driver side tyre, you have to go through the doors across the car to reach.