A friend of mine bought a used air compressor, a 100 gallon 10 horse one. The previous owner rebulit the pump and said it worked fine. I hooked it up and turned it on and everything worked fine. The next week I got a call that it would trip the breaker unless it was left to bleed the tank down to 50 lbs. I put an amp meter on it and it draws 196 amps for several seconds then trips the breaker. I figured it wasn"t releasing head pressure, but that checked out fine. Since the motor would surge while trying to reach full speed I though that maybe the run capacitor or the internal run switch was acting up. Replaced the capacitors and checked the switch, no change. Finally I pulled the pressure relief valve out of the actual pump itself, which is located just before the line hooks to the pump to go to the tank and the check valve. Without this 1/4" check valve in it it works fine, just whistles really loud. So I shut it off, and replaced the valve and the problem showed back up. Thinking that maybe the check valve was not opening up against the tank pressure the friend disassembled it and didn"t find anything wrong. Next, thinking that maybe the new line from the pump to the tank was somehow too small he replaced it with a larger hose(3/4" to 1"). No change in the problem, the motor tries to come up to speed, but surges twice like it cannot quite overcome some hurdle and trips the breaker out.
Any ideas? I"m fresh out of ideas myself short of switching the pulleys out for something a little easier on the motor.
Any ideas? I"m fresh out of ideas myself short of switching the pulleys out for something a little easier on the motor.