Hi Everyone,
Today was a scary day.
First we had tornados rip through the area. Great job to the U.S. National Weather Service for giving us enough advance warning to take cover. I grabbed my wife and dog and we drove over to my Mom's house since she has a full basement. (She only lives 2.5 miles away.)
We got there just minutes before the storms hit. Then the electricity went out. Fortunately we were using a battery operated weather radio so we knew when it was safe to come back up out of the basement. Everything looked okay at my Mom's house, just a few small limbs blown off of the trees, which happens every time we have a lot of wind.
So we drove back home and found one of our trees in the back yard had lost a huge limb and crushed our chain linked fence. The wind was still blowing pretty hard even though the storms were past.
Then about an hour later a tree in a different neighbor's yard fell into our house. Nice! Fortunately it didn't do enough damage to cause immediate attention, but now I have two different claims to deal with.
The storms rolled through around 2:30 PM EST. We usually have my Mom over for dinner and so I thought I better give her a call to see if her electricity ever came back on. If not, her garage door was not going to open and she would need my help. Sure enough the electric was still off so I drove over to help.
After we had dinner, I figured there was no sense in having my Mom go back home to a dark house, so we waited until 9:30 PM before it came back on. During that time we started learning about all the damage that was done to places just north and south of us. That indicated there was at least two different tornados since the storms were traveling in a west to east direction.
So we were sandwiched between two! That was too close.
Anyway, I was determined to get my air compressor fixed today so when I got back home I went straight to work on it.
Here is a picture of the beast:
Here is looking down from the top at the cylinders with the head removed, all cleaned up and ready for reassembly:
Here is the side view:
Here is the top of the valve plate, cleaned up (you should have seen it before I cleaned it!):
Here is the bottom of the cylinder head, also cleaned up:
Here is the bottom of the valve plate:
Here is the new valve plate gasket:
And here is the cylinder head gasket:
Here is the culprit. The blown valve plate gasket:
And here is the pump all fully reassembled:
I flipped the switch and she pumped right up! Just like brand new! So I am back in business!
Ken