Air Compressor Tank For Air Tools?

Hi all!

I know this is a truckers forum but was wondering if someone here could help me out. I have a 1998 International 3800 school bus and was wanting to hook an air hose up to the air tank as if it was a regular air compressor and use typical air tools you might find in an auto body shop such as a spray paint gun, nail gun or dual action sander?

Any help and knowledge on how or if I could go about this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

I see no reason that you couldn't. Just tee off of the supply side of the tank, install a quick disconnect, and you are good to go. All of the air lines on semi tractors and trailers appear to be pex or similar plastic. You could certainly get the parts from any Truck Parts supplier. With the flexibility of the plastic tubing, you could route your air supply outlet to a convenient location.

I think the only limitation would be the CFM requirements of the tools you would be using. The air tanks are fairly small, and I do not think the compressors are designed to put out large volumes of air. Im sure you could operate low volume tools like nail guns, air ratchets, etc. Pneumatic sanders and such require much larger volumes of air. Good luck!

Dave, that’s a pretty cool idea. But it’s a big engine running a small compressor. I’m wondering if installing a robust inverter and then using a regular 110V portable compressor would be the better way. If you did that you would have both air and electric power. Like Tractor Man said, you might be disappointed by the CFM of the air system only.

There is no way possible you could run a sander for more than ten seconds on a vehicle's tank.

I have a setup for air up a tanker just in case my pto driven compressor goes down. It takes forever so my guess is running air tools is a bad idea

The cfm is there but the storage capacity isn't near enough. The compressor would be constantly running and would tax the dryer system pretty hard trying to keep up. It would work but I wouldn't advise it as an all the time idea.

I would suggest a small, pancake compressor plugged into the invertor (if you have a larger one). There will still be many things that it will not work for, though.