Older air compressors

Here are some pics a buddy took of his small portable compressor. Not sure how old but I bet it was 30+ years . Nobody got hurt. I would not be surprised if they were running the pressure as high as possible to make up for having such a small tank. This was at a transmission shop not sure why they were using it unless the shop compressor was down.



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I was restoring my dad’s 20 gallon Craftsman from the early 70’s and my daughter and I were standing on either side of it and it clicked on and started building pressure and it blew out through the rust pitting. I looked up kinetic explosions and thank God it didn’t pop…

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I think most do start leaking through a rust hole and get caught before this happens. But it’s nice to see what can happen.

Red, from the Red-Green show could fix it with some duck tape.

WOW! That could easily have taken out an eye.

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most likely the pressure relief valve was eiter removed or rusted closed…
that tank has almost zero rust…so i doubt it was that type of failure

That has all the classic looks of a over pressureized vessel…booom!!!..

that is it important to check the safeties on equipment from time to time…pull the release valve once and a while…

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You could be right, it doesn’t look that rusty in the pic. I would be surprised if that crappy little pump could build that much pressure to open the relief valve. It did fail on the weld seam and normally that’s where rust would start first. We will never know.