Thread: Portable Air Compressors - Which is best

Originally Posted by solmanic

Where are people getting these $70 Bushranger Max-Air imitation units from? I wasted a bit of time hunting for them but could only find Supercrap selling them for $129. Big W only had smaller ones (for $130 I might add) and a few camping shops had the one like the Bushranger Pro-Air (too small) or the genuine article (too expensive).

I'm happy to go the tight-ass cheapie option as I know it will have a pretty easy life.

I got my copy from ebay... http://stores.ebay.com.au/Princess-Trade-Australia

But when I check ebay now they don't have the same stuff. Mine was 90L/min whereas these only do 35L/min.

I've heard alot of people talk that they got theirs from K-mart, big-W, etc but I've never seen em.

Aldi sometimes has them also but you got to be quick.

Supercrap is the cheapest... but 129 was the price, and I think that was only because it was discounted (from 179-199 I think).

Anyway, good luck... something will turn up eventually.

... Scott

the real ones have dropped in price by about $100.....
they were $290 at the show this year.......normally they are $390......

Yep, that one on the Princess-Trade Ebay shop site is the smaller one (Bushranger Pro-Air knock-off). The Max-Air has a big foam covered handle on the top and definitely does 70-odd litres/min.

Plenty of people have the Pro-Air knock-off for $70-$90. I think I'll just do the Supercrap thing in the morning before I hit the ferry. Either that or I could just spend the entire week-end running on 15psi until I get to a servo.

you could buy a hand pump.........or a foot pump.......then get the missus to pump up one tyre.......

you will have a brand new heavy duty top of the range twin piston compressor before you know it......
she will personally deliver it.......

OK, I thought I should post a follow-up on this topic for all the interested parties and contributors.

Well, I went and got the $129 no-name imitation compressor from Supercrap. Everybody's right - it does look and feel like the real thing so obviously the differences are internal (as mentioned in the article someone posted). Nice little bag and all the goodies to attach it to anything - good and solid feel too.

So off we went to Stradbroke Island for the week-end to have a play around. Let the tyres down to something around 20 PSI - thought I'd play it safe and only go down further if I thought about ploughing into some softer sand (tide was well out). Had some fun down and up the beach - went in through a few cuttings to see what the beachfront campsites are like for future reference - nice.

Back off the beach and now to see how quickly I can get all the tyres back up to road pressure. Front two up in no time. Then halfway through the rear left and the f#*%ing thing blows its fuse. Now as I'm sure many of you are aware there is a nice little stash of spare fuses in the cover for the fuse box and being a relatively new vehicle with all spares in place I thought, great, I'll just slot another one in and keep going. No such luck, the compressor has a 30 Amp fuse and there is only one of those on a Defender - but no spare above 20 amps. Given the speed with which the little prlck thing blew the first one, I thought there's not much point wasting a 20 amp fuse trying to keep going.

I gently drove back across the island to the service station in Dunwich to re-inflate the rear tyres, but they're closed on Sundays (lazy sods) so I had to continue at granny's pace up to Amity Point to the servo there. That's where I found the second problem with the compressor. It seems that even though the compressor's gauge read 20 PSI, the servo's gauge was closer to 30 PSI (could have driven faster - I thought the tyres didn't look down too much). Got all the tyres back up to pressure and let the excess air out of the front ones (they were up over 35 PSI).

It was a good thing we were not coming back home until today so I had some time to cool down otherwise I would have thrown the compressor at the Supercrap guy's head Russell Crowe style. Instead I calmly placed the offending item on the counter and said I'd just take a refund as it's not even worth trying another one the same. They had one chance to impress me and blew-it. Moral of the story - I guess you get what you pay for, but to all those people with the Bushranger copy that's going well for them, I guess you can get lucky too. I'm not taking a second chance and will get the genuine Bushranger for my next beach trip.

As an alternative have a look at the ABAC portable compressor. I noticed these in my local Mitre10 last week, no idea what their like but their price is good and they seem to be OK and are a nice G4 bright orange colour.

I've been trying to find more info on them on the web but with no luck. ABAC do also make a large range of full industrial compressors (www.abac.it).

for the thread bought a cheap $90 unit about 3 years ago and used for 1-1/2 years before I got a 4wd systems pump. (Sold my brother in law the Feroza, we had a jackaroo as well and threw in the cheap compressor)

He doesn't plenty of sand driving and the thing get's used every 2nd or 3rd weekend never let us down yet! (Mate has an ARB which also seems very slow in comparison to both of our pumps and we often end up helping him finish

Hi all..... new here. Living in Dubai at present and have been following the ozzie forums quite a bit coz we have a lot of things in common camping and vehicle wise.

I first experianced the ARB compressors whilst living in Saudi. They were at the time the best thing going and I bought one without a second thought.
Over the course of a year it was only used twice a month to pump up four tyres on my Discovery.... but then the piston cylinder and teflon piston rings disintergrated and the unit became worthless.
I went out and bought another one and low and behold after a year the same thing happened again....the rings failed and it took forever to pump up a single tyre.
I then moved to Dubai and discovered the Max Air range of compressors. Three years later and the thing is pumping as fast and hard as the day I bought it! It's also cheaper than the ARB by 50%........our club of nearly 500 members must have the highest owner ratio of Max Air compressors outside of Oz..... great bits of kit. Steer clear from the ARB stuff unless you only want to activate the difflock etc....it's what they were designed for....not tyres!
Oh...and the heat from the ARB is horrendous compared to the MaxAir....

Regards to all.

Streaky.
www.teamsaluki.com