I have one of the older Thumper compressors, it's been great but always anoyed me that it has a male Nito fitting whereas compressors usually have a female fitting. This means you can't use a standard tyre inflator, blow gun etc:
I decided to replace the fitting, but in my haste to take the thing apart I broke the tube that fits inside the handle:
The tube appears to be made from cast Chinesium. Whatever it is, I know it's brittle. The thread for the safety valve is 1/4 BSP, but the head to T piece is a very odd size. I guess it is a metric fine thread but couldn't find a single replacement fitting that would screw in. Supercentre had no idea and couldn't supply any replacement parts, just a whole new compressor.
So I drilled and tapped the head to 3/8 BSP then fitted a 3/8 to 1/4 reducer:
Red Locktite means it's not going anywhere:
From there I added a T-piece and a pressure switch, as with the female Nito fitting the compressor needs to shut off automatically when the air isn't flowing. The pressure switch is connected in series with the existing on-off switch:
The compressed air now exits through the side of the handle:
And I can swap a standard regulator/filter between my big compressor and this one, or just connect any airline direct:
Finally I added Anderson plugs in the cable, so can connect either to an external Anderson on the Paj, or with clips on the battery. To be honest the standard cable is pretty borderline and does get warm in prolonged use. If I were doing this again I'd probably upgrade the cable:
The finished article. The wires to the pressure switch come out through the rear of the handle where the original air fitting was and through a hole drilled in the rear cover. In terms of the time and effort required to do this I would say absolutely a waste of both, but I wasn't throwing a perfectly good compressor in the bin just because I broke a couple of bucks worth of fitting!
Cheers,
I decided to replace the fitting, but in my haste to take the thing apart I broke the tube that fits inside the handle:
The tube appears to be made from cast Chinesium. Whatever it is, I know it's brittle. The thread for the safety valve is 1/4 BSP, but the head to T piece is a very odd size. I guess it is a metric fine thread but couldn't find a single replacement fitting that would screw in. Supercentre had no idea and couldn't supply any replacement parts, just a whole new compressor.
So I drilled and tapped the head to 3/8 BSP then fitted a 3/8 to 1/4 reducer:
Red Locktite means it's not going anywhere:
From there I added a T-piece and a pressure switch, as with the female Nito fitting the compressor needs to shut off automatically when the air isn't flowing. The pressure switch is connected in series with the existing on-off switch:
The compressed air now exits through the side of the handle:
And I can swap a standard regulator/filter between my big compressor and this one, or just connect any airline direct:
Finally I added Anderson plugs in the cable, so can connect either to an external Anderson on the Paj, or with clips on the battery. To be honest the standard cable is pretty borderline and does get warm in prolonged use. If I were doing this again I'd probably upgrade the cable:
The finished article. The wires to the pressure switch come out through the rear of the handle where the original air fitting was and through a hole drilled in the rear cover. In terms of the time and effort required to do this I would say absolutely a waste of both, but I wasn't throwing a perfectly good compressor in the bin just because I broke a couple of bucks worth of fitting!
Cheers,
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