BUICK 1964 Skylark Coupe Project

Okay, so slight change of plans...

Was talking with my uncle about my compressor plans, and he offered to let me borrow his portable diesel compressor that he has for his commercial plumbing company. I was a bit hesitant as I generally don't like to borrow tools, especially tools that other people rely on to make money. I told him I may need it for a while, but he insisted he almost never uses it and I could borrow it as much as I'd like for as long as I'd like. I decided to give it a shot considering how much money it might save me, and if it didn't work out, I'd return it and go back back to plan A.

Today I went to his shop to pick it up, and based on how much dust was on it, how flat the tires were, and how dead the battery was, I feel a bit more comfortable about borrowing it. He fueled it up for me, and we aired up the tires, but with the dead battery, I didn't get to see it run at his shop.

Once I got it home, I hosed the dust off and put a jump pack on it, but it still didn't have enough juice to crank. So I pulled the battery out, saw it was dated 2011, and decided I'd just go buy a new one for it. $150 later, I installed the new battery, and it fired right up.


It has Chicago couplings on it, so I made an adapter to run regular 3/8 industrial quick connects. I hooked up the sandblaster for a minute just to test it and yeah, this thing puts out a lot of air. It is rated at 175 CFM. It only makes 90PSI, which is still enough, but the volume is insane. It's not very loud either, which is nice.

I do have to figure out some sort of water separator as I am getting water through the lines. There is a very old-looking two-stage filter in the tool pocket that I have yet to hook up, so I'll try utilizing that first. I could also run the line to my water filter/regulator in the garage, then out to the sandblaster and see how that works too.

Anyways, we have air!

Rktpwrd said:

Diesel portables are notorious for making a ton of water. Get yourself the most efficient dryer you can if you plan on using that even semi-regularly.
We use them as emergency backup compressors for our customers when theirs fail and they don’t have a second compressor.

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Good information. Any recommendations on dryers, or what to look for, or even where to look, when trying to find one?

Don't know that I'll be using it regularly, or even semi-regularly, but I will be using it for the blasting. Almost certainly not for any kind of paint.

Rktpwrd said:

Honestly, the correct solution would be impractical and not cost effective for you in this application. Something like a permanent heated twin tower desiccant dryer to match the CFM output is what would be needed to fully remove all the water in a diesel portable application.

Not exactly feasible in this instance.

However that is not to say that there's nothing you can do to help mitigate it. I don’t recall, but how big is the air receiver tank on your old compressor? Believe it or not, a receiver tank is your best water knock out just by simply plumbing it inline with the sandblaster. This is because the air has a chance to cool slightly (depending on usage) in the tank causing the suspended moisture to condense and drop out. So naturally, the bigger the tank, the more effective this becomes. Just make sure to drain the tank thoroughly and frequently.

Parking the portable a good ways away from the tank and blaster will help as well because of this same principle. The greater the distance away from tank and the smaller the diameter of the hose will cause a pressure drop though, so take this into account. If possible, I would plumb the compressor to a tank in 3/4” hose and from the tank to the blaster in regular 3/8” air hose. This should eliminate any pressure drop concerns.

Post tank, any mechanical action style water knock out (inline filtration) refrigerated dryer, or non heated desiccant dryer (like what you’d find at Harbour Fright) will help remove what the tank doesn’t.

As you can see, there’s a fair amount of factors to take into account, but what you want to do is still achievable. I’ve been in the compressed air industry for over a decade now and am a senior tech at my company so I’m very familiar with what I speak (for reference and context).

Hope this helps!

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Very much appreciate the info Donovan. Glad to have an expert who can chime in to help or at least tell me I'm an idiot.

My old compressor is 30 gallon. I experimented with the stuff I had around today and seemed to have decent results. I hooked up the filters that were in the tool pocket directly to the compressor. They didn't seem to be very effective, but they didn't seem to hurt anything either.

From there, I hooked up a 100' hose and ran it to my filter/regulator in the garage, which actually showed the compressor is putting out more like 120 PSI. Gauge on the compressor reads low I guess.

Then from there I ran a 50' hose to the blast pot, which has a small inline dessicant filter and then a separator of its own.

With all of these filters, I didn't see any water coming through at the end of the line. I believe the blue filter in the garage was doing most of the heavy lifting. If I do start getting water with this setup, I can always plumb the 30 gal tank from the other compressor into the system and see if it helps.

Got my schedule and the weather to cooperate enough that I was able to do some blasting today. It took some adjusting and tuning, but I eventually got the sandblaster set up so that it was really working well. I got a good bit of blasting done. The rear speaker deck panel is done as well as I'm gonna get it. I got the window channel on the driver's side done, as well as the driver's side A Pillar and some areas around the windshield and dash. I sort of bounced around, working on one spot for a while then moving to another and going back, which probably isn't the most efficient way to do this, but it kept me interested.



I began working on the door jambs, but the wind started picking up and carrying the dust all the way over to my neighbors' houses and it was pretty bad. I'm no stranger to pissing off the neighbors, but even by my standards this was douchey, so I stopped where I was and wrapped it up for the day. Any ideas for a less dusty media?