Making some air
A more clever use of the AC compressor
My Wagoneer were equipped with air-condition from the factory. Living in Norway does somewhat limit the use for air-condition as the summers are not what you can call extremely hot. In addition, having an air-conditioner in an off road Jeep isn't on my list of "must-have". The fact that the AC didn't work when I first bought the Wag had nothing to do with this, honest :-)I soon realized that I needed some way to air up those mudders after a day of wheeling so when I decided to build myself an on board air-supply, the AC compressor was the first thing that catched my mind. After a rebuild of the compressor, I started to look into what I needed to make it work. |
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The original York AC compressor in the Wag are very suitable for air supply setup because it can supply much pressure and lots of volume, and it comes with a electric operated free-wheeling clutch so that it don't have to turn all of time. Therefore, it is just a matter of finding the other parts needed and locations to install them on the Truck.
Putting the compressor right
I could have left the compressor in the original brackets and just changed the hoses but I didn't like the very low alternator placement that would have given me, so I made a new bracket to fasten both the compressor and the alternator.
I used the original compressor bracket in the original position and put a piece of steel plate in place of the compressor. I then welded another steel plate 90 degrees onto the first one. The compressor bolted onto the vertical plate so the inlet and outlet pointed straight up. The alternator was then placed on top of the original bracket where the compressor used to be and is now higher than the valve covers. The pressure switch was placed on the fender just in front of the heater.
An air pump without a place to store the air is not very useful so I found myself a tank from a big truck's brake system. This have a capacity of around 42 litres or 12 gallons and is a rather big tank to place on a truck, but as I have relocated my fuel tank and spare tire it was a easy fit under the truck. I located it at the front of the cargo floor right under the back seat. When I did the body modification and swapped in Dana 60's and converted to coil-springs , It was no longer room for the tank under the bed. The top arms on the 4-link that controls the rear axle where hitting the tank so I put it inside the bed.
Making it work
The air goes from the compressor into a one-way check valve, so the tank isn't emptied when the pump doesn't run and then to the pressure switch. From the pressure switch the air is split four ways. One hose goes to an in cab pressure gauge, another one to the tank, one to the outlet in the grill and the last one goes into a regulator to make air for my air-shifted QT. I also have one that goes from the tank to an outlet in the rear bumper. The safety valve is placed on the tank. If you like to see a drawing, take a look here
I used a pressure switch from a stationary compressor set so the air starts pumping when the pressure in the tank goes below 80 psi and stops pumping at 130 psi. This makes my hoses and tank happy and is enough to air up quickly and drive air-tools if I want to. It is wired through an on/off switch in the dash. I've also wired the carb solenoid into the circuit to make the idle go up to around 1500 rpm when the compressor kicks in. The only problem with using the original solenoid is that it has not got enough force to raise the idle speed on it's own. I got to manually press down the pedal to activate it. But once this is done it will hold a steady 1500 rpm and go down to 700 when the compressor turn off. So it's really half useless:-) I will change this when I find a solenoid that have more force.
Am I pleased ?
The air-supply has turned out to be one of the most useful additions I have done to my Wag. I regularly use it for airing up my own and other people's tires. The pump is so powerful that it fills the tires as fast as the air-outlets at gas stations. I have also used at several occasion for seating tires after they have popped of the wheel. Not to forget, having an impact wrench on the trail makes those trail side wrenching even more fun than without the wrench :-))
Questions ?
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