I've been using it a lot for the last couple months, To be safe every day I was cracking my valve to blow out any liquid in the tank. Its Arizona, so their usually isn't much. Yesterday I got a surprised. I crack the valve slowly with hand in front of the tube, and I got a handful of oil. My first guess is the rings are bad. Probably finally went after a couple months of nearly continuous duty trying various experiments with air. I certainly have the ability to put a new pump on it or maybe even open the pump, find the problem and fix it. I probably will since having a roll around can be handy even if you have distributed shop air.
Right now though I think its time to finally get that larger shop compressor I have been wanting for a while. I can't afford one of those super duper things from IR or Osborne so those aren't even on the table. I'm looking more at one of the box store compressors. Something like a single phase
230V 60 or 80 gallon compressor. Something with more volume than my roll around. Something in the $500-800 range that I can be pretty sure of getting a decade out of.Given those kind of constraints and price range, which one is going to give me the least problems?
I notice there are a couple on the floor at Depot missing parts. That indicates to me they may not have the best QC. Depot, Lowes, and HF all have a 60 gallon that looks like it was made in the same factory and they are all about the same price.
HF also sells Cambell Hausfeld, which I have had good luck with obviously, but I don't think they stock any in the size I want. I also don't know if Cambell is as good as they used to be now that you can find them on the floor at Wal-Mart.
Back when I did warranty work on compressors for Tool & Supply Roll Aire and Devilbiss where the better ones we handled, and Sanborne was OK, but not quite on the same par. Sanborne was excellent on warranty though. They never denied a claim if I told them I thought it was legit even if it was out of warranty.
However... I have since felt that other Devilbiss air tools have lacked in performance and found better performance out of Rigid and Hitachi air tools. It causes me some concern that Devilbiss may have reduced their standards overall in the last 20 years. I don't know who sells any of those three brands locally today.
... and I kinda want to just go buy a compressor today...