Thank you!
Those little lights are wickedly cool. At that price it might be worth grabbing another one. Thank you kindly.
I just wonder how much oomf those things have. Like I could go around all 4 tires and go topping off each one, and still the compressor would get quite toasty, so that’s quite a lot of energy going through. Bringing up a tire from like 5psi to 25-30 in limp-home mode could go fine as long as you watch the heat, but that’s for 12V, or 14V with the engine running, not ~4V.
Anyone ever have one of those, and bring up a tire from almost flat to driveable?
They are like a proportional miniaturization of a much larger thrower. It’s really neat, but… man, that 10180 cell is such a joke for that kind of throw. In 5 minutes you can completely drain it. I really think Lumintop would’ve done much better providing a 10440 tube by default with the 10180 cell and tube as optional. Anyway, it’s a fun light. I just wish it came with Anduril instead of NarsilM.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that thing would manage heat build-up very well. Looks so contained without any kind of vent.
Back in the summer of last year, Jon Slider and I were fixated on finding really good portable air pumps that could handle car tires well. After a few tries & fails, we found one that worked out well. LINK. I still use it periodically and have no trouble at all. The hose+nozzle doesn’t stow that well, so I leave part of it hanging out. The battery keeps a charge for a long while. I think I’ve charged it up fully about 3 times so far. I checked around and it looks like this model was discontinued. It’s a design that really works. I see dozens of crazy designs coming out from all of these weird Chinese named companies like Ghiluli, Shaman, AirPou, Haolite, Viyor, etc. Then in about a year, they’re gone.
Description says “3 Lithium Ion batteries required. (included).” If that’s true, then it’s probably running at around 12V.
Anyway, I’ll be the guinea pig and check it out for you guys, but I’m mainly interested in using it to air up family bikes tires without having to pull out one of my larger air compressors.
EDIT: Looks like one guy on Amazon took it apart. It uses 3x18650 in 3s configuration with a capacity of about 1200 mAh.
Eep! Is there anything even resembling a BMS inside?
This review has more photos:
I wonder if adding some grease to that compressor gear would stop it from wearing so fast, or perhaps at all?
I opened up a ‘stock’ one that came with the car and immediately added some silicone grease to the gears and piston O-ring. Just a smidge.
I got interested in this thread because of recently dealing with this stock unit. Runs off 12v plug-in. ~10’ of cord, and a screw on connector. Didn’t do any measured filling but it did 4 wheels from ~35psi > 40psi in about 5”. Gauge reads about 4psi high in this range. Did 2 cars for it’s first outing and satisfied enough to not feel a need to buy something else right now.
Seems some new cars, in order to keep weight and costs down, plus maximize space don’t give you a spare. You get [Slime] (major UGH!), and this little compressor. I was not sanguine it would actually work so had to test it.
Slime has been replaced with a patch kit (the kind you force a chunk of sticky rubberized substance through the hole), and 100 mile towing AAA. I’ve used the patch kit on 2 tires (not in the field). Worked OK, and still holding years later. I figure if the kit would not work, neither would the Slime. Damn Slime causes problems with the rims and TPMS systems.
Yoiks, that’s pretty bad…
Opened mine up and added grease as you did. Seemed easy enough and it really needed it. Amazing they assembled this thing with no grease on those pot-metal gears. Only one green light was showing on the battery meter, but static voltage was still up there at 11.2v. It’s on the charger now.
If the grease keeps the gears from stripping, I’ll find a good 18650 triple battery (triangle format) power pack wired in 3s and replace the battery too. It’s only going to be used to top off small tires on a 2006 Toyota Corolla. If it doesn’t work out, the $10.71 delivered won’t kill me. Besides, I still have that great ShockFlo Brand Cordless Tire Inflator I got for a great deal on hand too.
I added some synthetic grease to mine as well and then proceeded to air up a few bike tires. Seems to work OK.
As mentioned, mine arrived with some charge on it, only one of the four charge lights were illuminated, so not fully drained. It took hours to fully charge and required 2,400mAh put into it. It clearly has much more battery capacity than what that Amazon review showed at only having a 1,200mAh battery pack. That review, was originally from December 2021 and edited again in March 2022. Should I ever run it totally down, I’d be curious how much power would need to be put back into it, and how close it would actually be to the 4,500mAh rated that the sticker shows on my unit.
How did you measure that? As a 3S/12v unit pretty much the max it could have with some of the best batteries available would be ~3500mAh. No idea what the load is but Panasonic NCR18650G 3600mAh is rated [ Maximal Continuous Discharge Current: 4.87A].
Seems 2000-3000mAh is not unreasonable.
Damn, so the readings on my USB tester are not accurate or I didn’t calculate it correctly? Now I feel like an idiot.
It showed 12.09 WH and 2,385mAh input into the Inflators battery.
Since this inflator has a power bank function, a more accurate test would be to measure its discharge capacity. I’ll try to find some time to do that.
Btw, your tester is showing 12.09Wh of energy consumed by your charger. At 3.7V (average voltage of an 18650 cell), that is 3268 mAh of total capacity, or 1090 mAh per each of the 3 cells.
Thank you Pete for the clarification