Home made air compressor

Has any one turned an engine into a air compressor? I have a Chevy inline six. I think its a 250CI. I was going to put a four speed transmission behind it. Then turn the drive shaft into a PTO shaft. I have removed the exhaust push rods. The couplers on the air hose screw into the spark plugs holes. Will this produce enough air to run a sandblaster? Its going to be allot of work. Just wondering if its going to be worth all the work!?

I haven"t....but....I will say that is quite clever! The only I can think of is you"ll need a one way valve if you are going to be using the spark plug holes for the piping otherwise it"ll be pulling in air from the hose during the intake and power stroke (downward motions) of the pistons which will be counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish.

Clever indeed!

Someone sells valves that replace the sparkplugs for doing this. Think I saw them in "Farm Show Magazine ". Otherwise the compressed air could be explosive.

I saw plans once to convert a big-block Ford V-8 into a compressor. The heads on one bank were replaced with plates with valves, manifolding, etc. One side of the intake manifold was blocked off and the other bank was left to run as a four-cylinder engine.

Many LeRoi and Schramm Air Compressors are stock 6 and V8 engines converted to half engine, half compressor, but I don"t know what-all is required.

If you're going to run the engine with a pto and have all the cylinders pump air will be fine. I would take the intake pushrods out also and put real weak springs on the intake valves and just let vacum open the valves as the piston goes down each time. Other wise if you let the cam open the intake valves they will only open every other revolution of the crank shaft and you'll be wasting fuel. In a six cylinder engine with weak springs on the intake valves you will have two cylinders pumping air at the same time so actaully you'll have a 3 cylinder compressor.

Each sparkplug hole will need a check valve and then you'll need a main check valve where all of them go into the tank.

An unloader valve will be needed also in this main line between the tank and engine. This unloads any pressure in there so the compressor can start up under no load while there is still air in the tank. You will most likely be money ahead by buying a large tow behind compressor on ebay for around $1,000.00.

Compressed air is "STORED ENERGY" waiting to expand rapidly and can kill some one so if you don't know exactly what you are doing it's best just to buy one.

Kits are available to convert engines to run on half the cylinders and pump with the other have of the cylinders, but the cam needs to be replaced in order to to this.

I have seen a high pressure natural gas compressor factory made from a Ford 460 engine. One side was an engine, and the other side was a 4 stage compressor with an intercooler between each stage. It was used to fuel a natural gas locomotive. The gas was compressed to 3500PSI to fill the tanks on the loco. The half that was still an engine ran on natural gas. It even had a little turbo on it.

Thank you every one for all your comments and Ideas! Ryan Nagele