Tools & Fabrication - Air compressor

Hey guys it's black Friday do I went and bought a 33 gal standup compressor... Just curious if there's a way to change out the petcok valve... The one on the tank sucks in my opinion because it's basically a screw that you have to use pliers to open... The kicker is it doesn't really drain anything... Just a little whisper... You have to turn it and pull it a certain direction to get any air out... Can I change this to a better valve?

I just did mine the other day. Got a good idea from a post i read a while back. I believe mine was a 1/4 NPT. Your's will be similar, take the drain fitting completely out of the tank and take it with you to match it up. Once I confirmed it was 1/4 NPT female fitting on the tank I bought 1 male/male elbow, 1 female/female coupler, one short piece of male/male pipe, one female/male ball valve, one female/female elbow. I found all this in the brass fitting section near plumbing at Home Depot. I assembled it in the above order using teflon tape to seal each threaded section and turned the last elbow downward. Now you can flick the ball valve with your foot to release the built up water or drain the tank.

if you want to get real fancy they have an automatic petcok drain that threads in and plugs into the wall and has a timer that opens it for a few seconds every once in a while to drain the condensation out

Did this to my 30 gallon air compressor.

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j214/pomona87/0ed1d855.jpg

I had the auto drain on my last compressor but didn't like it because it was too tall and I had to keep the compressor on blocks so it would clear the ground. Plus I like the control of doing it myself. It did work though as far as I know. The ball valve serves as a way to dump the air from the tank when not in use also.

home depot sells a nice drain plug that works great.

i think i will look into the ball vave because it seems fairly inexpensive and an eay way to drain... i literally have to either get on my hands and knees to turn the petcock that doesnt work anyway... or tip the whole compressor on its side

I use the automatic drain on my Eaton compressor. Timer set to open every 30 minutes for 2 seconds....scares the shit out of everybody when it pops...funny as hell!!!! :D