A Portable Compressor

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PHOTO: ROY DYCUS
A toy wagon makes a regular air compressor into a portable compressor.

We’re certain that our “proud-to-be-a-scrounge” readers will remember the made-from-scrap vacuum pump/compressor we featured in a previous issue (“A Homemade Vacuum Pump and Air Pump“). Well, a frequent contributor to these pages, homesteader Roy Dycus, came up with a way to make that already handy device even more versatile, with the help of a toy wagon that his children had outgrown:

“For eight years, I’ve used a sealed compressor from a junked freezer as a tire and tube ‘pumper-upper.’ To make my unit into a portable compressor, I simply bolted it to the bed of a child’s pull-wagon and clamped a hose from a hand air pump (which had also, needless to say, been scrapped) to the outlet of the mechanical windmaker.

“To assure adequate lubrication, I just squirt a few drops of machine oil into the inlet side of the pump every two months. That is all the maintenance the compressor has ever seemed to need!

“The wagon makes the rather ungainly assembly very easy to move to a tractor, truck, or auto that needs a tire filled and eliminates the necessity of removing a heavy wheel from a disabled vehicle and carrying it to a stationary air compressor. All you need is a sufficiently long extension cord, and then ‘Mohammed’ can go to the ‘mountain’!”

  • Published on Aug 2, 2012
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