Stuff We Use: Compressors

On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we have actually used or purchased with our own meagre income. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories.

Pairing well with last week’s missives in Stuff We Use, in which we talked about impact wrenches, are air compressors. While we know this type of item isn’t likely to be the very first thing gearheads add to their arsenal of tools, it is often on the list as a planned purchase at some point down the road.

Why’s that? Cost, mostly (isn’t it always?). A good compressor worth its weight in, um, air I guess, is going to run at least a couple of hundred bucks unless one falls into your lap cheap from Marketplace or an estate sale somewhere. The two generally most popular types of compressors for home use are the so called ‘pancake’ or ‘hot dog’ styles, named literally for the appearance of their holding tanks and not for their ability to fix you a tasty snack.

At the most basic of levels – and the B&B is free to correct me or even go apoplectic in the comments about this vastly oversimplified explanation of how a compressor works – a unit of this type hauls in atmosphere and compresses it under pressure in a holding tank where it sits until it’s ready to be released via hose into a tire or to operate air tools or to simply clean away dust from a bench. The bigger a holding tank, the less time its compressor motor (that’s the part which makes all the racket whilst using one of these things) needs to be running.

A compressor with a holding tank size of about two gallons is a good start for many hobbyists, since the tank is large enough to contain a sufficient amount of air for basic jobs without running noisily all the time and annoying yer neighbors. Five-gallon ones may also do the trick. For comparison, those semi-permanent monsters found in many professional garages (mounted to an old wooden pallet to help absorb some of the noise, natch) can hold about 80 gallons, far more than this author would likely ever use in a sitting even during his most frenzied of wrenching sessions.

Another side piece to this party is something colloquially called an ‘air pig’, a unit which is basically just an air holding tank without any sort of compressor motor to replenish the supply. When the air is gone, it’s gone. Some people use this tool as something of a portable cache of air, perhaps showing up in areas where workers know something will inevitably need industrial-sized reinflating but can’t fire up a compressor because reasons.

We’d be remiss not to mention a popular segment of air compressors in which there is no tank at all and the thing just runs the entire time it is providing air. These are good for very light duty applications, such as the emergency topping up of a tire or inflating some sports equipment, since running a compressor of this type continuously for extended periods of time is likely to damage the unit. And no one wants a damaged unit. These el-cheapo compressors can be found even in the most horrid of discount stores, where quality can be iffy but prices temptingly cheap. While this author has obviously not tested every single mini compressor on earth, he can say that luck has been scarce around here in terms of these things lasting much longer than a typical Hollywood marriage. In some cases, ya truly do get what you pay for, especially with compressors that purport to be part of some 10-in-1 device. Sticking to well-known name brands isn’t a bad idea in this product space, either.

A sensible approach would be to save a few shekels and pop for a compressor with at least a two gallon capacity, one which is likely to be sufficient for most of yer work and can be sold on Marketplace later on to fund a bigger one should the need (or want!) arise. 

[Images: eBay]

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