Wow, what a popular topic!

While agreeing the idea of spending as much as you can afford on a compressor, I have a little tip from a farmer that helped alot on our trans africa trip.

Carry a long piece of hose (long enougth to stretch from your spare tyre to the farthest road wheel) with an adaptor on each end to fit the valves. Then when you get the chance blow up your spare tyre as much as possible. (60-100psi is usually possible.) This can then give you 1 or 2 full tyre refills before you have to resort to a pump.

Tom

Not really advisable. The spare tire has to be in tiptop shape to handle such pressure. A friend of mine blew his spare at only 80 PSI. Also forget to use this technique in hot climates, the air inside the tire will expand and the pressure can easily double and the tire will blow. Air compressor tanks have a pressure relieve valve that lets out heated air out to keep the pressure within the tank specs.

Also you will barley be able to inflate one tire. If you set the spare to 80 PSI and hook it to another flat tire, the pressure will level between both tires to 40 PSI. You cannot pump the 40 PSI in the spare to a third tire. To use the spare to fill 2 tires to 40 PSI, the spare will have to hold be pressurized to 120 PSI.

I would use this method only if I have a new spare and only as a backup to the compressor and never south of the Mediterranean.

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A.B.
www.ShortWheelbase.com

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A.B.
OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.

Interesting, I thought it sounded too handy to be true...

CS

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Morocco Overland 4 pre-order for Xmas • Trans Morocco Trail

I agree that a less than perfect spare might blow in hot weather etc., but would this method provide enough fast air to pop the tyre onto the rim when going tubeless? If it just did that and nothing else, then the tyres could be topped up with a compressor. It could save the ratchet strap or bicycle inner tube tricks being tested. What d'you think?

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Pete Sinclair.
Alnwick to Botswana
http://www.a2b.uk.net

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Pete Sinclair.
Alnwick to Botswana
http://www.a2b.uk.net

Pete, I don’t know it if would pop up the tire, I never tried it but I don’t think it would. The tire can hold only so much valuable air and I think a lot of it will escape from the open bed before it has the chance to pressurize the sidewalls and push them to the bed. I have an air tank (about 6 liters) in my engine driven compressor setup described in my post above. It’s compressed to 130 PSI and it barely reseats the bed. The compressor usually kicks in during the seating process. I might be wrong here, somebody better try it.

I forgot to mention that there’s another very cool air source alternative. A CO2 tank. It’s basically a small (10-15 liters) CO2 welding tank or a scuba diving tank, which can be filled with CO2 to almost 2000 PSI from any welding shop. The welding regulator (usually comes with the tank) allows the air to be released slowly to fill up the tires and can easily reseat the a tire. In fact if the tank is full, it’s more powerful and faster than my engine driven compressor.

Why CO2? Because it compresses much better than any other gas, so you can put much more air inside that small tank at 2000 PSI. A 15 liters tank can easily inflates 40 tires. Yes, that’s 40 tires . And it’s no bigger than a scuba tank, you just toss it on the roof rack (not inside in case of a leak) and forget about it.

All you need is to get a regular welding tank with it regulator and get an air chuck fitting for it to fill the tires.

I hope I’ve explained how it works well. Feel free to ask me for more info if you want to make one.

A company in the US sells them ready made for off roaders. www.PowerTank.com . Check their site for more info, but you can make you own much cheaper.


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A.B.
www.ShortWheelbase.com

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A.B.
OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.

Errr... at over 300 USD a throw the PowerTank seemes a bit OTT. For that money an engine drive compressor can possily fill 40 thousand tyres (cost of fuel to run the engine).

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Roman (UK)
www.polandrover.com

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Roman (UK)

Do you get a gold star if your topic goes over 50 replies??!!

Sam.

or a free T-Shirt perhaps ???

Roman, it is OTT, but you can make your own for less than a 100$ in used parts

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A.B.
www.ShortWheelbase.com

[This message has been edited by A.B. (edited 11 June 2002).]

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A.B.
OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.

Sure CO2 is great giving you lots of gas very quickly, but what happens when it is empty? How many places in the middle of the Sahara have the facilities to top up a CO2 tank?

Great if you are just off roading for the weekend and you can have it refilled on Monday morning, but for expedition stuff forget it.

Fitting an air con pump and a tank (the really important bit) will not cost a lot if you use secondhand bits less than £200 anyway.

I do agree with you that a compressor is better (engine driven, not electric) but actually you can refill your CO2 tank almost anywhere in the world.

Maybe I neglected to mention this in my previous post; the tank you should get is a regular CO2 welding tank. They come in sizes that range from a small fire extinguisher bottle to huge tanks (1.5 meters). They all have the same manifold and use the same regulators and are all pressurized to 2000 PSI. As long as you didn’t change the tank fittings (and why would you), you’ll be able to fill it anywhere in the world that has a welding shop. The welding shop itself might not be able to fill it for you but at least they will point you to where they fill their own CO2 tanks. It usually takes 24 hours in most parts of the world to refill and test your tank.

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A.B.
www.ShortWheelbase.com

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A.B.
OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.

[QUOTE ...the air compressor available through this website... QUOTE]

Hi
I'm new to this site and cannot find the above mentioned air compressor...can anyone give me the direct link?
Thanks

Grand Erg in Milan makes them

info@granderg.com

www.granderg.com

Ch

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Morocco Overland 4 pre-order for Xmas • Trans Morocco Trail

Re the CO2 bottles:
It's nice to be able to fill up a CO2 bottle almost anywhere in the world but don't count on Holland (admittedly not the destination of choice for users of this forum). I called around to check out the availability of CO2.
A specialised welding shop told me they could get me a 2nd hand bottle at approx. 100 eur but getting it filled with CO2 would be a bit of a hassle as these days a mixture of Argon and some other gas is used for welding. This was confirmed to me by the garage.
The welding shop also told me that nitrogen is the gas actually being used for pressurising tyres these days.
I guess a CO2 bottle is nice and handy for weekend trips but not as reliable as having your own compressor.
cheers,
Camiel

Love this thread! An RAC patrolman recently recommended Porsche compressors to me. Apparently modern Porsches have a spare tyre packed flat to save space. The toolkit contains a compressor to inflate it. That's all I know.

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If a thing is worth doing, it\'s worth doing to extremes.

Has anyone heard of or have a compressor from VIAIR? I found them at the 'Offroad 24' store , along with airtanks etc...

http://www.offroad24.de/offroad24_b2C_pfund/index.html

Have a look, it's not cheap, but if you can't be arsed with a dozen trip to the breakers yard then it could be interesting.

Baldrick.