Not to worry; there is no hole in the atmosphere letting all of the lovely, moderate temperature air leak out of north central Florida. Quite the opposite, the past week has been pleasant enough here with some rain.
I was draining the auxiliary air tank/system today as I have been every day or so since I first drained it some weeks ago and got a lot of water out of it. The procedure I’ve been using is to drain the tank until the auxiliary air compressor turns on (~80 PSI), shut the drain valve, wait for the air compressor to turn off (~104 PSI), and repeat until I get dry air from the drain. This procedure cycles the air compressor more quickly than during “normal” use, but does not exceed a 50% duty cycle. As I was finishing up, the air compressor tried to turn on but could not turn and pump air. I could hear the motor trying to run until the thermal protection device opened. Something mechanical in the unit had seized. (Once a week or so I’ve been starting the main engine and using the very dry air from the main engine system to dry out the auxiliary tank, but that is not good for the big Detroit Diesel engine.)
Great (not). Our coach has a really nice air flush toilet that only uses a half gallon of water per flush as long as it has 50 – 60 PSI of air pressure with adequate volume. No air? No flush. (And no dump valves or other air powered accessories.) Not the end of the world —one of the RV Resort bathrooms is not far from where we are parked—but not convenient either, especially in the middle of the night.
I pulled out the binder with the documentation (such as it is) for our conversion / house systems and found the data sheets for the auxiliary air compressor. The documentation was for a Dayton Speedaire. I took my flashlight and inspection mirror to check the actual air compressor. It was a Gast 34BB-32-W300X. I wrote down the model number and noticed that it had a five-character code under it that matched one of the model numbers on the Dayton Speedaire sheet, 2Z868. Hummm.
I got on the WWW and searched for Dayton Speedaire, but all of the hits led me back to Grainger Industrial Supply. I searched for Gast and found the manufacturer’s website. The exact model number of my unit was not listed, but they had a similar model number (3HBB-10-M300AX) with nearly identical specifications ( 13″ L, 10″ W, 6″ H, twin horizontally opposed oil-less compressor pistons with Teflon rings, 2.4 CFM @ 0 PSI, 100 PSI maximum pressure, 1/3 HP, 120 VAC single phase electric motor, ~70 dB ).
I called Butch (because that’s what I do in these situations) and we talked it through (because that’s what we do in these situations). I learned that Dayton is now a “house brand” for Grainger and that Grainger also carries Gast air compressors. He looked up air compressors in his Grainger catalog, verified that the exact model number I was looking for was not listed, and gave me model numbers of units that were very similar. He also gave me the phone number for the Grainger location in Ocala, Florida.
I also sent an e-mail off to our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi. He sent me a link to a compressor made by California Air tools. It was available through Home Depot but had to be ordered online and shipped or picked up at a store. It was designed for running small air tolls and came assembled to an aluminum air tank. It was less expensive than the Gast replacement and would have been a nice compressor if I had room for the whole thing, but it was not a drop in replacement for the one that failed. That meant installing it would be a big project; not something I was prepared to take on while parked at the RV Resort. I also did not want to wait for it to be shipped.
I went back to the Gast website to see where else I might be able to get one if Grainger did have what I needed. They had one distributor in Florida, Braas Corp., in Oldsmar, Florida just north of St. Petersburg, Florida.
John Hagan had offered to drive up from Dunnellon to help me with bus projects. I had phoned him every night to push our plans back another day as we waited for warmer, dryer weather conditions. I called him again to let him know about the air compressor, see if he wanted to help with that project, and set it up for Saturday assuming I could get a new compressor on Friday.