Wednesday 16th September - A new compressor!

 A few weeks back, my ancient air compressor decided to retire. It's done well because I bought it eighteen years ago and it was second hand then! It had been proving difficult to start up in recent months and now it had got to the stage where if it did start, it wouldn't restart once the pressure dropped. Then it suddenly announced its retirement one day by refusing to start at all! (It had been trying to tell me gradually I guess)

I tried replacing a few parts that might have been causing the issue such as the air pressure valve, the starter capacitor, but nothing was curing it. I even had the electric motor checked out by a firm in Southend. (The guy there wouldn't believe it was made in Czechoslovakia because that hasn't existed since 1992 and it's been the Czech Republic since then!) 
However, once he had it front of him with the manufacturers plate in front of him he had to accept that it really was that old! 

I managed to find another guy that would come round and see if he could bring it back to life, but after various checks he pronounced it unrepairable. The main thing was that even if he could get it running, the pump wasn't up to much and replacing it was impossible as it was so old, you just can't get the parts anymore!
Even the air tank was built by BMC (British Motor Corporation) for one of its heavy duty trucks and had a date stamp on it from 28th July 1976!

So, I decided to bite the bullet and treat myself to a new one. SGS were doing a good deal, so I dug deep and purchased a brand new one. (Free next day delivery too!)

I also cleaned out the old air tank and stripped all of the motor, engine and switches off of it and my compressor man is going to come back at some point and plumb it in to new tank so that I can have double the capacity. It'll take longer to build up to pressure, but once up, it will last all day. 😊