How about some ideas on building a high volume air compressor out of a car engine. There was a thread on this a couple of years ago (see link below) but I was hoping for some new ideas and more details. Maybe an I-6 or V8 running on half its cylinders and pumping with the rest.
Fred
Yeah, its been tossed around here a couple of times.. I've concluded the easy way is to buy the VW conversion kit from Dunn Right. (Do search on Google Groups for 'Dunn Right'..) However, junkyards seem to have no usable VW cases. I've wanted to build one, but I can't do so cost effectively.
What would be cost effective would be to a use a very common American V8 (Ford 5.0?) of 10-20 yr old vintage. There are LOTS of those at my local junkyard. (Who was just having a sale on any engine you wanted to pull for $75.) However, when you go that recent, you end up with fuel injection, electronic carbs?, and computers. So, one of the other things I've been thinking about is what it would take to confuse an early car's computer to operate with half its cylinders, perhaps some sensors, and transmission missing.. However, the electronics might take more effort than the entire VW coversion. Even if you go back 20 years to 1984, that stuff had Engine Control Modules.
If someone made a kit for something other than a VW, I'd probably buy it.
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I'm thinking about the Ford 300ci straight 6. Here's my proposed recipe:
Even if I was to use the later fuel injected models I'd get rid of the whole intake system and put in it's place a custom tube intake manifold for the three running cylinders. I'd put a simple carburetor on that and use a distributor that can run indpendent of any computer. Then I'd remove the lifters and pushrods from the pumping cylinders so that the valves on those cylinders are no longer operated by the cam. I'd put valve springs with very light tension on the intake valves of the pumping cylinders so that the sucking action of the piston alone would open the valve on every down stroke. The compressed air would then pump on every up-stroke out through check valves in the sparkplug openings wich would flow into a manifold for the compressed air that connects the three pumping cylinders together.
I'm wondering if the air flow would be adequate through the single "suction actuated" intake valve per cylinder. I'm also wondering how to "unload" the pumping cylinders when there is no demand for air; is a pressure relief valve (a blowoff valve) that vents the compressed air to the atmosphere above a certain pressure an adequate solution?
Fred
On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 01:16:23 -0600, "F. Hayek" brought forth from the murky depths:
You'd spend what you originally saved on the first rebuild. You'd probably spend an extra month of man hours doing it, too.
I think this is one of those things which is done only because you can, -not- because you should.
-- If it weren't for jumping to conclusions some of us wouldn't get any exercise.
I don't know about that one, Hoyt. Way too much hot air in those things!
:^)
Jim
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The best unit is an old Harley motor.
About 20 years ago I owned a portable (Ingersol, I think) that used a Dodge flathead to do just this. It ran on three cylinders and pumped on three.... 135 CFM at about 100 PSI. It was used for sand blasting. The cam may be commercially available.
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