"The Daring Dufas" wrote in message
...
On 8/26/2010 5:37 PM, willshak wrote:
X-post to A.H.R and A.B.C.

I bought a new air compressor and received it today from HF. It's a
Central Pneumatic 2 HP, 8 gallon, 115 psi. It replaces a CH compressor
that went belly up.
My main use for a compressor is to fill up tires and pool floats, and
maybe blowing some dust around. I do have some air tools left here by my
deceased F-I-L (hammers, chisels, paint sprayers), but rarely use them,
other than for a framing nailer used to build a very small deck, or more
correctly, a small porch deck.
I discovered that it was not an oilless compressor. They put enough oil
in it to test it, but did not fill it, nor include any oil to fill it.
The oil fill viewer on the side is empty, but there are indications that
some oil was put in there. Before I even assembled the wheels and air
cleaner to it, I opened the valve and air came out under pressure.
I looked up compressor oil on the web and found some sites that say you
could use regular 30 weight motor oil instead of compressor oil, and
other sites saying you can use 10w30 motor oil, and even other sites
that say you can use synthetic motor oil. It appears that the only oils
not recommended are salad oil and baby oil. :-)
I have some 10w30 motor oil and some 10w30 Mobil1 handy. What oils have
you used without destroying the compressor?



I buy my air compressor oil at WW Grainger. I bought my compressor from
them 20 years ago and the first thing I did was to install a Solberg
filter adapter which has a housing that accepts a round pleated paper
filter element that looks a lot like a small automotive air filter. Dirt
kills air compressors faster than anything else. The oil in my compressor
stays clean for a very long time.

My father owned a auto body shop many years ago. He had a (real) 5 hp, 4
cylinder air compressor. To improve performance and to feed it clean air, we
piped the intake to outside the building. It ran for many years. We also
only used automobile oil in it and changed it every few months as it was in
use all day 7 days a week.