12v 'T Max' compressor recommendations

[muddy]

Good morning, firstly apologies if this has been covered but the search didn't throw anything up.

My better half has bought herself an inflatable 3 man kayak as you do... the pump the shop were selling was rather weedy and about £100 so that got left behind. 

As you probably guess I am looking to get a 12v compressor that can double as a rapid kayak blower-upperer and handy tyre pump should it be needed when away from home. looking on Ebay and Amazon there seems to a large choice with most of them coming out the same factory I guess. 

 

So are any better than others? any links and suggestions welcome.

 

Will.

[Eightpot]

I would stick to a manual pump to be honest though not the standard cheap pumps you get with most kayaks- it would be very easy to overinflate and burst the seams with an electric pump.  I used to use a big Coleman dual action manual pump (inflates on upstroke & downstroke) and it only took a couple of minutes to inflate a big Sevylour Colorado. 

The benefit is you can feel when you're at the right pressure  - the guage on an electric won't acurately measure the 1.5 bar and you'll waste more time connecting/disconnecting inflating and deflating or possibly nail the kayak.  

Also a good warmup for the arms 🙂

Ps, you can take the hand pump with you, not ideal finding you didn't screw the inflator valve back properly when you're half an hour downstream or in the middle of a lake 😉 

Edited May 2, 2023 by Eightpot

[Escape]

I have to agree a manual pump is probably a better choice for the kayak.

As for electric ones, we're using this one from Vevor, very similar to the big T-max and does a good job. Last Saturday it was used to inflate all tyres on 7 barnfind cars, running from a spare battery. Not big tyres (155R13 and 185R13) or high pressures, but it did make it an easy job. And it cope's just as well with the tyres on the Rangie or those on the car trailer that need 6bar.

[Ed Poore]

Could you not do something like what I did last week (albeit for the workshop compressor), I removed the standard tyre valve clip from the inflator and replaced it with a PCL female end. The clip then had a male end threaded onto it so now I can swap "tools" downstream of the tyre inflator. The use case for me was that I needed to pressurise (under control) a TDV8 air suspension bag I was replacing. The upside is now if I want to blow up a tyre I simply clip in the tyre valve thingy to the end of it, if I need something else then I can do that (in this instance I have a little pig-tale which has a 1/4" PCL fitting to 6mm push-fit connector that's suitable for the RR air-lines.

So get a standard "T-Max" style compressor but cut off the end and put a proper tyre pressure gauge / inflator onto the end of it. I'm quite happy with the digital one I got and it was about a tenner from Amazon I think.

[FridgeFreezer]

1 hour ago, Eightpot said:

the guage on an electric won't acurately measure the 1.5 bar

Worth noting that gauges are cheap and fairly universal parts so it would be easy and maybe £10-£20 in bits to make an adapter that has a more accurate gauge on it for kayak-only purposes. If you were really fancy you could even put a cheapy pressure-relief valve on to prevent over-inflation.

[geoffbeaumont]

Our kayak was supplied with a separate (manual) pump and manometer, but I've ended up using the one from our caravan awning instead as that has a manometer built in - it's not as accurate but it's good enough.

I'll throw in another vote for a manual pump for the kayak. It's not a lot of effort, quicker, quieter and as eightpot says you can take it with you.

Top hint, especially on hot days - if you can, put the boat in the water for a few minutes and the recheck the pressure before you set off. The change in temperature can drop it quite a bit and make the boat overly flexible. The flip side to this is you need to watch out for excessive pressure if you haul out and leave the boat in the sun.

Have fun - our kayak has been one of our best purchases of recent years.

[Ed Poore]

Or just swap it for one of these instead and then you don't have the faff...

(PS dogs and inflatable stuff don't mix very well...)

[landroversforever]

From similar discussions around inflatable tents, ones like air beam tents and inflatable paddelboards or boats is they're far more about volume than pressure. Most things suitable for pumping up car tyres are more about pressure so the two don't really interchange. Think about how many times someone rocks up on a campsite and has the car tyre pump running for ages to blow up a mattress . Case in point, friend of mine has the same Airgo tent.... trying to blow it up with a T-max style twin pump takes forever15-20 mins per beam. The dual action manual pump that comes with it has the beams up and supporting the tent in maybe 10 full up-down cycles of the pump.

[Bowie69]

Yep, knife to a gunfight.

[Ed Poore]

Since it's a LR forum and we're not known to overbuild things... 

Air con pump onto the LR engine - pressure and volume, sure thing for blowing up the kayak and then you don't need to worry about it anymore 

[muddy]

Thanks as ever chaps, bravo 110 hand pump ordered.

 

Yes if we were going with the landrover i'd use the OBA, I could blow it up in the workshop and take the transit, or the trailer however she's off up to the highlands in a motorhome with mum and grandma so lifting a solid or fully inflated kayak is out the question. I suppose I could bumper mount a PTO hydrovane and rig up a chain/belt drive from a jacked up front wheel or even an extra crank pulley; make an adaptor to replace one or two injectors and use the engine as a half pump or even fit some air valves to the field roller, pre charge it and they could tow it behind...

[geoffbeaumont]

2 hours ago, Ed Poore said:

Or just swap it for one of these instead and then you don't have the faff...

(PS dogs and inflatable stuff don't mix very well...)

Rigid hull is always going to be better in the water - for us easier transport means the inflatable gets used far more than a rigid kayak would (we've usually got bikes on the roof).

Never had any problems with the dogs in ours:

[FridgeFreezer]

Another option is the "dive tank" style OBA setup that used to be popular - a diving tank filled to its working limit or just any old air tank / fire extinguisher filled with some PSI from the workshop compressor will happily fill something quite large but low pressure very quickly.

Old air suspension tanks start at about £25 delivered on eBay and are small, light, and rated to about 16 bar.

[Eightpot]

5 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Worth noting that gauges are cheap and fairly universal parts so it would be easy and maybe £10-£20 in bits to make an adapter that has a more accurate gauge on it for kayak-only purposes. If you were really fancy you could even put a cheapy pressure-relief valve on 

Unless its a budget pvc jobbie, a lot of them use long inflatable bladders inside a protective nylon skin, so it's ideal to go fairly slow and adjust the bladder as you go after its been stored folded up to get a good hull shape.  If you blew it up rapidly it would likely twist up like a pigs doodah and they tend to go a bit banana shaped 😄

A tyre fitters bead blaster would be fun to watch though 😆

Oh the other useful thing with manual pumps is they also work in reverse, great for drawing the last air out after deflating and getting them packed down small 👍 makes a huge difference

[Escape]

22 hours ago, Ed Poore said:

So get a standard "T-Max" style compressor but cut off the end and put a proper tyre pressure gauge / inflator onto the end of it. I'm quite happy with the digital one I got and it was about a tenner from Amazon I think.

If you add a proper tyre inflator to the T-Max style compressort, you do have to be careful not to keep the compressor running with the inflator closed. They do not have a tank so pressure will rapidly rise if no air is used and even though there is (should be) an overpressure valve, the compressor wont like running at maximum pressure for very long.

[geoffbeaumont]

18 hours ago, Eightpot said:

Unless its a budget pvc jobbie, a lot of them use long inflatable bladders inside a protective nylon skin

Low end or high end - it's only really mid range boats (like ours) that use bladders inside an outer shell. Though the high end ones use much tougher materials, or increasingly drop stitched panels like paddle boards.

[ped]

A co2 bottle used to be the inflating source for life rafts and i think my life jacket takes a 32g cylinder

I used to use a 13ci paintball tank to blow up a dinghy when fishing if i couldn't use the landy compressor

[muddy]

Pump arrived yesterday and initial reports from the living room test run are positive, less than 5 mins to inflate. First stop is loch lomand on Monday I think.

[geoffbeaumont]

Enjoy 🙂

[Exmoor Beast]

If you are going to go boating do it properly 😉

Will

[muddy]

Indeed, but for this trip portability is top priority I believe.