HughF
Member
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- 6,469
- Location
- Work: Dorchester, Workshop: Corfe Castle, Wife's place: Frome
I have a 'factair' FLF-16 compressor, it looks like this:
From the factory, it has a 2 part non-piloted unloaded valve (when it unloads, it doesn't throttle down), mine never worked properly despite endless adjustment and rebuilding. This 2 part unloader has the sense section seperated from the unload section. You can make this out on the picture above where the sense section is just before the outlet oiler and the unload section stands up vertically on the aluminium air manifold.
It would unload on tick-over, just, but when you revved it up to provide some juice for the bigger air tools, it would fail to un load at all and just burp the safety valve all the time.
It is worth pointing out at this stage that it doesn't have a tank of any sort, just about 1.5m worth of 10mm bore pipe between the outlet of each cylinder and the manifold that has the unloader port and the non-return valve on.
I removed the original 2 part unloader and fitted one of these which I had kicking around, but without the throttle cable as mine doesn't have that port:
The one I fitted is rated at 20cfm. This has worked about 10% better than the previous unloader, in that if I play about with the throttle and the the adjustment I can get the unloader to cycle nicely when running an air powered sander. However, with an intermittent use tool (impact gun, big air chisel, needle scalers etc) which needs more throttle, when you let off the trigger the damn unloader can't dump enough air through the exhaust port and the pressure relief valve blows off again.
I'm now wondering if I need to fix this in 2 ways:
Fit a small receiver to the compressor frame to help the unloader work better.
Fit a piloted unloader with a cable to the throttle.
Does anyone have any more advice?
And they are truly superb compressors by the way. 16cfm at 150psi in something a strong bloke can carry about, just. There are 2 on ebay but they are stupid money, I didn't give anywhere near what they are asking for theirs!
From the factory, it has a 2 part non-piloted unloaded valve (when it unloads, it doesn't throttle down), mine never worked properly despite endless adjustment and rebuilding. This 2 part unloader has the sense section seperated from the unload section. You can make this out on the picture above where the sense section is just before the outlet oiler and the unload section stands up vertically on the aluminium air manifold.
It would unload on tick-over, just, but when you revved it up to provide some juice for the bigger air tools, it would fail to un load at all and just burp the safety valve all the time.
It is worth pointing out at this stage that it doesn't have a tank of any sort, just about 1.5m worth of 10mm bore pipe between the outlet of each cylinder and the manifold that has the unloader port and the non-return valve on.
I removed the original 2 part unloader and fitted one of these which I had kicking around, but without the throttle cable as mine doesn't have that port:
The one I fitted is rated at 20cfm. This has worked about 10% better than the previous unloader, in that if I play about with the throttle and the the adjustment I can get the unloader to cycle nicely when running an air powered sander. However, with an intermittent use tool (impact gun, big air chisel, needle scalers etc) which needs more throttle, when you let off the trigger the damn unloader can't dump enough air through the exhaust port and the pressure relief valve blows off again.
I'm now wondering if I need to fix this in 2 ways:
Fit a small receiver to the compressor frame to help the unloader work better.
Fit a piloted unloader with a cable to the throttle.
Does anyone have any more advice?
And they are truly superb compressors by the way. 16cfm at 150psi in something a strong bloke can carry about, just. There are 2 on ebay but they are stupid money, I didn't give anywhere near what they are asking for theirs!
