Stuff We Use: Compressors

Matthew Guy
by Matthew Guy

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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Matthew Guy
Matthew Guy

Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.

More by Matthew Guy

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  • ToolGuy ToolGuy on Sep 17, 2024
    I have a pancake compressor and a twin cylinder compressor and a medium-size upright compressor and a permanently-installed piping system and a retracting hose reel and a small portable 'quiet' compressor and a couple of rechargeable inflators and one that uses line current and a bunch of 12V ones in my vehicles (a couple of those are pretty nice, enter the pressure you want and it stops automatically), but I don't have a Telluride, and no one cares. You youngsters carry on.
    • ToolGuy ToolGuy on Sep 17, 2024
      Several years ago I happened upon a couple of vehicles stopped in my neighborhood and of course I had to see what was going on. The lady had called her golf caddy to help her with her flat tire and the caddy and another gentlemen had a small inflator hooked up to a tire which had a gaping hole the size of your fist in the sidewall. I wonder if they get advice from the TTAC Podcast.
  • GrumpyOldMan GrumpyOldMan on Sep 18, 2024
    That reminds me of the time when I saw a car on the shoulder of I-40 with a completely shredded tire. The funny thing was the can of Fix-A-Flat still attached to the valve stem. What were they thinking?
  • KOKing I owned a Paul Bracq-penned BMW E24 some time ago, and I recently started considering getting Sacco's contemporary, the W124 coupe.
  • Bob The answer is partially that stupid manufacturers stopped producing desirable PHEVs.I bought my older kid a beautiful 2011 Volt, #584 off the assembly line and #000007 for HOV exemption in MD. We love the car. It was clearly an old guy's car, and his kids took away his license.It's a perfect car for a high school kid, really. 35 miles battery range gets her to high school, job, practice, and all her friend's houses with a trickle charge from the 120V outlet. In one year (~7k miles), I have put about 10 gallons of gas in her car, and most of that was for the required VA emissions check minimum engine runtime.But -- most importantly -- that gas tank will let her make the 300-mile trip to college in one shot so that when she is allowed to bring her car on campus, she will actually get there!I'm so impressed with the drivetrain that I have active price alerts for the Cadillac CT6 2.0e PHEV on about 12 different marketplaces to replace my BMW. Would I actually trade in my 3GT for a CT6? Well, it depends on what broke in German that week....
  • ToolGuy Different vehicle of mine: A truck. 'Example' driving pattern: 3/3/4 miles. 9/12/12/9 miles. 1/1/3/3 miles. 5/5 miles. Call that a 'typical' week. Would I ever replace the ICE powertrain in that truck? No, not now. Would I ever convert that truck to EV? Yes, very possibly. Would I ever convert it to a hybrid or PHEV? No, that would be goofy and pointless. 🙂
  • ChristianWimmer Took my ‘89 500SL R129 out for a spin in his honor (not a recent photo).Other great Mercedes’ designers were Friedrich Geiger, who styled the 1930s 500K/540K Roadsters and my favorite S-Class - the W116 - among others. Paul Bracq is also a legend.RIP, Bruno.
  • ToolGuy Currently my drives tend to be either extra short or fairly long. (We'll pick that vehicle over there and figure in the last month, 5 miles round trip 3 times a week, plus 1,000 miles round trip once.) The short trips are torture for the internal combustion powertrain, the long trips are (relative) torture for my wallet. There is no possible way that the math works to justify an 'upgrade' to a more efficient ICE, or an EV, or a hybrid, or a PHEV. Plus my long trips tend to include (very) out of the way places. One day the math will work and the range will work and the infrastructure will work (if the range works) and it will work in favor of a straight EV (purchased used). At that point the short trips won't be torture for the EV components and the long trips shouldn't hurt my wallet. What we will have at that point is the steady drip-drip-drip of long-term battery degradation. (I always pictured myself buying generic modular replacement cells at Harbor Freight or its future equivalent, but who knows if that will be possible). The other option that would almost possibly work math-wise would be to lease a new EV at some future point (but the payment would need to be really right). TL;DR: ICE now, EV later, Hybrid maybe, PHEV probably never.
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