A recent trip of ours has brought a few things to my attention. First was the fact that I had no way to air my tires back up after being on the trail all day. It’s 7 miles to the closest gas station from our local ohv park, which in all honesty is to far to drive with only 10psi in the tires, but I have on occasion made the trek to the station for air. I usually try and travel with at least one person that has an onboard air setup of some type, but I find myself going solo more and more lately.
Back to the last trip we took, me and my wife in our jeep my good friend and his wife in there well set up full size blazer. We spent all day and about 30 miles in 4low on the trail. When we got back to the staging area I was ready to air up get home and shower. My buddy’s blazer has a York based onboard air system. So the task of airing up the two rigs should have been easy. Nope… flipped the switch and nothing (turned out to be a faulty relay) oh well no big deal we can run down the road the gas station and fill up there. Well we get there and their air and water are out of order, so three gas station and about 15 miles later we get to spend almost another hour airing up both rigs. After that I decided next time I go out I will have a way to air my tires back up. I have had a York compressor sitting on my shop bench for the last year collecting dust so that evening when I got home I went online and ordered up a few thing I knew I would need like a 2.5 gallon tank a couple air gauges, pressure switch, pop off valve, check valve and some other misc. fittings.
First thing to do was move the battery, so time for an upgrade. An optima yellow top was acquired and I relocated the battery to the space were the coolant over flow bottle was, which required me to build a new battery tray.
Battery tray hanging after paint
Battery all cozy in its new location
Then I built the mount for the compressor
After that I had to find a way to run the comp. kilby enterprises sells a nice billet combo serp and v alternator pulley, but at 60 bucks I figured I could build my own for free, so here’s my alternator combo pulley installed with the compressor mounted and the belt on. Works like a charm.
Now that the compressor was mounted it was time to plumb the system originally I was going to run a line strait off the comp to the air tank then have the pressure switch and all that right on the tank but decided it would be better to have a junction under the hood for that duty, there are some nice manifolds out there but they all seemed to be in the 40$ + range so again I built my own ( I mean what’s the point of investing all this money in tools and fab equipment if I’m not going to use them right.)
Drilling
Tapping the holes
A couple more holes for mounting and BAM!
Then I made up a nice stainless steel braided leader hose ~3 ft. to run from the compressor to the manifold. I have heard these things can put out some extremely hot air as they pump and given under hood temps are already high. I figured I already had the hose and the A.N fittings from a previous project so good piece of mind that it won’t fail and blow a hose at an inopportune time.
From the comp the leader hose runs behind the battery and into the cowling under the front widow then back out and through a one way check valve here.
To keep the air to the compressor clean I simply plumed it to the factory air box. There is a unused port on the grand Cherokee air box lid from the factory that was perfect for this. I just had to run a 3/8 drill bit through it and some 1/2” ID vacuum hose and I was in business.