superflow, mv-50, little red pump tear down

[troyboy162]

i had a free minute today so i decided to give my pump some attention.

tear down is very easy to get at most of the goods. simple take off the top four "cylinder head" bolts. then the head flutter vales, cylinder and jug heatsink come off leaving you with a view of the piston assembly.

i haven't noticed any drop off in performance but i figured a tare down would be fun. i found quite a bit of dirt in mine and some scoring on the cylinder walls. the cylinder wall issue is strange as the "piston ring" had deformations but nothing that correlated with the walls. my guess is there was dirt or manufacturing debris to blame thats has sence passed through the system. the good news is if you flip the cylinder over you get fresh walls again as the piston only uses the top portion.

slime air gauge mode- not really happy with this...it flutters back and forth while the pump is on so its impossible to get even a idea of where your at while inflating. you have to turn off the pump to see what you have. the old guage may be going back in. at least i knew that when it read 45 it ment i was at 40 psi. sure the slime is more accurate, but if your airing down you most likely are already carrying a decent tire gauge. oh and by the way at first i bought a replacement air gauge at harbor freight. when it fluttered like crazy i figure it was just cause i had bought a cheap version since there was no mention of this behavior from others that had done the mod. so...i went out and bought the slime version and its exactly the same gauge :(

here is a picture of the cylinder and the cooling fins. you can see all the dirt on the paper towels underneith. also i have added thermal compound between the fins and the cylinder. that should help quite a bit to give those fins a chance to do there job.
http://www.wow.digitalchaosgaming.com/t4r/red1.JPG

here is the piston assembly. note that the flywheel is rusty even though this pump is only 4 monthes old
http://www.wow.digitalchaosgaming.com/t4r/red2.JPG

here is the uncleaned cylinder head to give you an idea of the amount of crug i found inside. either the air filter isnt very good or maybe this is bits of flash that have come of the Chinese parts. the pump is only 4ish monthes old.
http://www.wow.digitalchaosgaming.com/t4r/red3.JPG

[paddlenbike]

Cool! The heatsink compound between the cylinder liner and heatsink ought to help significantly. Now I want to see you add a 25-shot of NOS and see what happens. :P

[L33T35T Tacoma]

Very cool. I have two of those compressors running in the back of my truck. Last week we were up in cleghorn ridge where there was some snow. I had to air up 3 trucks with my compressors so i took some of the snow and put it on top of the "Cylinder head" They stayed nice and cool the whole time :-)

[4x4mike]

I bet your pump is nice and happy now. I don't have a lot of use on mine but it is a little workhorse. The filter that comes on them is sub par but I still have mine on there. I was going to add a better one but them it wouldn't fit in the ammo can I store it in.

[corax]

how about using a K&N breather filter?

https://secure.buschurracing.com/catalog/images/KNbreather.jpg

[4x4mike]

edit: With the K&N the filter will make it a tough fit in a .50 cal ammo can. Chance are the filter that's half the cost of the compressor will get damaged while wheeling.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06686.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06687.jpg

[Tankota]

Thats an awesome little air compressor there. I've had mine for several years now. I'm planning on hard mounting mine under the hood and running its intake tube in the trucks air box.

[Intrepidyota]

I dropped mine fairly early on and smashed the air filter to pieces, it was cheap and I figured replacement parts were unavailable, so I left it off. It has been running just fine for the past couple years without any cleaning, maintenance, or air filter. :D

[CJM]

I had both of mine apart a few times, and mine never looked like that inside ever.

[troyboy162]

I had both of mine apart a few times, and mine never looked like that inside ever.


must be the conditions out here. the poor thing is usually used out in the desert. my black car gets instantly dusty when im done washing it. a shine used to last weeks back home in the east :(

[4runnerchevy]

Wow, that thing is tiny. My daughter needs her tires blown up on her 10" bike / with training wheels, can you help !

[CJM]

must be the conditions out here. the poor thing is usually used out in the desert. my black car gets instantly dusty when im done washing it. a shine used to last weeks back home in the east :(


Gotta be, cause mine are both fine.

[Tankota]

Wow, that thing is tiny. My daughter needs her tires blown up on her 10" bike / with training wheels, can you help !


Haha, that thing is actually pretty good size. Just the same as the typical viar compressor. Really puts out some volume too.

[CJM]

So far I like mine, I tapped it for a regular fitting and it puts out way more air, only drawback to that is I think I need a regulator or something b/c it will just build pressure period and Im afraid it will blow.

[4x4mike]

You can wire in a pressure switch or use a blow off valve like I did.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06322.jpg

It's weird. Sometimes the thing will blow off and just leak down, other times it will pop, stop, opo, stop, pop. The pressure gets released then it builds up then released and so on. The valve is a fixed one set at 115 psi. I've never had a problem with it and it was cheap compared to the viair wired pressure switch.

[CJM]

I should really do that, b/c mine will build up to 150psi + and run fine but I fear Im damaging it.

I think ill get one for 120psi or so..

[troyboy162]

So far I like mine, I tapped it for a regular fitting and it puts out way more air, only drawback to that is I think I need a regulator or something b/c it will just build pressure period and Im afraid it will blow.


hmmm your getting more air out of it with some new plumbing? can you post some pictures of what you have done? this sounds like some good stuff to try!

[4x4mike]

I plumbed mine for regular NPT fittings as well. With a blow gun on the end of the blue hose the free flow air is about 10 over what it was stock. I don't know the exact psi numbers but it's more but I think it's mostly because of the larger diameter hose. my fittings are 1/4" NPT.

[CJM]

All I did was take a 1/4" NPT tap and tapped it out, then I took a female coupler and put it on, nothing fancy-it works. The only thing I noticed was that one I had previously drilled out one of them (I have 2 b/c of this mess up) I went slightly off kilter and it leaked. It also built up so much pressure it flung the coupler off.

I remedied the coupler issue flying off with some JB weld and my 2nd one I did this mod to has been fine, but like I said it build up to much pressure. Output is insane tho, the unit gets hot to the touch after 3-5 mins.

You can pick up the tap at lowes, home depot didnt have it.

I think the outputs more b/c of the larger hose and the coupler is larger diameter than the stock stuff (which is some kinda asian fitting btw).

[4x4mike]

Like CJM said the head gets hot. Anything metal to thread into it get's just as hot, especially if it's brass. I used the black leader hose because of the heat. It's a heavy rubber hose and it'll withstand the heat better than the vinyl hose I plug into it. Last thing you want is to melt your hose one tire into airing up. I only have one air up on this setup as I installed a York underhood. This is backup and for the other vehicle.

[CJM]

Oh it does get really hot, I never melted a hose b/c the hose sticks out far enough away from the body b/c of the quick fitting on its end.

Even so it gets really hot. Im highly considering one of those pump 12vs, alternatively for 300 I can get a 2 gallon tank and 12v comp like we use in our work trucks, it pumps out enough to use an impact for a bit.

[L33T35T Tacoma]

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c357/jlboggs/air.jpg

It's cleaned up a lot more now. Plus I have dual optimas back there also. I'm using a ford starter solenoid to switch the compressors on and off. the solenoid is switched up in the cab. I took the aligator clips off the ground side of the compressors and hard wired those to the battery.

Also i was having a problem with the compressor on the right always losing air once i turned the compressor off. after returning it 3 times and getting a brand new one each time i had to accept it. So i put a one way check valve in directly after the compressors join lines. Fast forward 2 years, one day i got a wild hair and decided to mess with it. I tightened down the head bolts (which were LOOSE) and wa-la, no more leak.

I really should put a pop-off valve on there somewhere on the compressor side. I've never let it go out of control though and get over 120 PSI

[strykersd]

WHAT? Your guy's came with a filter?!?!? I must have picked up the wrong box and just got screwed. Mine had a leaking gasket on the head and no filter. I noticed the gasket after the 30 day return policy, but luckily I was able to seal it up with RTV.

I really like the tank setups, I should try that out some time. I always wish I could air up faster, it takes exactly half an hour to fill my 33X10.5s from 10PSI to 35PSI.

[CJM]

WHAT? Your guy's came with a filter?!?!? I must have picked up the wrong box and just got screwed. Mine had a leaking gasket on the head and no filter. I noticed the gasket after the 30 day return policy, but luckily I was able to seal it up with RTV.

I really like the tank setups, I should try that out some time. I always wish I could air up faster, it takes exactly half an hour to fill my 33X10.5s from 10PSI to 35PSI.


Try doing the mod with the regular output and not that cheesy thing, trust me it works so much better.

[troyboy162]

just an update concerning the thermal compound i put on the jug fins. it really has made a difference. before i did it the coupler would be too hot to unhook the hose after doing 4 tires. now its still dang hot but i even i can take it off lol. more heat is definitely being dispersed by those fins now.

[Robinhood4x4]

Quick tutorial on pneumatics.

There are two different measurements you need to be concerned with, one is pressure and the other is flow. You all know pressure, PSI. This is the amount of force exerted onto a surface so at 10 psi it's like having a 10 pound weight on every square inch of surface exposed to the pressure.

Flow is the volume of air moving past a given point. So you can have 1 cubic foot of air per minute moving past a point in the air line. The kicker is that you can have 1 cubic foot moving past that point at 1 psi or 100 psi, either way it's still 1 cubic foot of air moving past that point per minute.

Now, when you enlarge things like hoses and fittings, the end pressure cannot change. What enlarging things does is increase the sectional area so that the air can push through easier, therefore the flow is increased and tires fill up faster.

Really, for filling up tires we could care less about having a high pressure compressor. We really need low pressure, high flow. Manufacturers of these little 12V compressors like to boast that their compressor can go up to 200 psi but that doesn't mean anything for fill up time.

[Erich_870]

just an update concerning the thermal compound i put on the jug fins. it really has made a difference. before i did it the coupler would be too hot to unhook the hose after doing 4 tires. now its still dang hot but i even i can take it off lol. more heat is definitely being dispersed by those fins now.


It would be cool to get some before and after temps using an infrared thermometer! I was going to buy one of these from Costco, but they sold out before I knew it, dang!

Erich

[troyboy162]

the little red pump that could, died on me this weekend. one of the flutter valves gave up. i couldnt think of any kind of fix that i could trust so i ended up buying a new one at pepboys. they charged $59 but at least they had 2 in stock. i wanted to buy there display model for parts but the woman found two in the back room.
http://www.wow.digitalchaosgaming.com/t4r/pumpdead.jpg

[L33T35T Tacoma]

Sam's Club has them MV50 now on their website

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=383881

unfortunately nothing in stores. They do have this in the stores though...

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=408395

[Tankota]

You could totally fix that with a small piece shim stock. Just measure its thickness and get some from a metal store.

[troyboy162]

You could totally fix that with a small piece shim stock. Just measure its thickness and get some from a metal store.

hmmm that may be a good game plan. all i could think of was the metal straping from a pallet or maybe a spring from a tape measure

[corax]

I'm thinking beer can tab -or- how about a reed valve from a 2 stroke motor (they're meant for this type of repeated flex and stress). A quick ebay search for "reed valve" found a whole bunch, several under $5.

[Tankota]

I'm pretty sure you can actually get spring steel in varying thicknesses. If not shim stock will work. Maybe try to get Stainless Steel shim stock.

Or... if you have an old set of feeler gauges, snip off a piece of that.

[Intrepidyota]

Wow, that thing is tiny. My daughter needs her tires blown up on her 10" bike / with training wheels, can you help !


Minor OT from the current discussion, but I just noticed this comment, I just used this thing to seat the beads on four 38" TSL's because I ran out of CO2. :clap:

[Tankota]

At work today I was poking around a dusty shelf looking for sanding discs, and I found a couple rolls of shim stock! If your still interested troyboy, PM me your address and I will stick a couple inches of it in an envelope and mail it to you. No worries about any money, it only costs like 41 cents to mail a letter.

[troyboy162]

thank you so much! i will try some of that stuff out to find what works. ill return the favor to the community by mailing replacement vales to anyone who needs them