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Mud Dobbers and tools don't mix

6K views 31 replies 14 participants last post by  bentwings 
#1 ·
I had this under the "Compressor which one to buy" thread and oldred said it should have it's own thread so maybe it would help some of us in the future, I hope it does

My son and I bought a commpressor, it was a 60 gal. 6hp 220V, it was a good compressor, it would put out enough air to run my sand blaster non stop if I wanted to push it, BUT , it has a V-twin pump on it, one of the oilless type compressors, you could look up under the plastic cover on it and see the bottom of the pistons,cylinder walls and the rods, it has sealed bearings on the rods and the wrist pins,

I turned it on one day and heard a weird noise and seen a puff of dust come out of it, I didn't think much of it at the time but from that day on I noticed it was takeing longer than normal to build up air pessure and shut off and I would run out of air very quickly when doing any sand blasting,

It was out of warrenty by this time , I put a new filter in it but that didn't help a bit, I took the plastic cover off of it and looked at the bottom of the pistons and noticed a lot of scareing and scratches on the cylinder walls, so I took it apart, the pistons on this thing are only like an inch tall, they have a neopreme(sp?) ring on them instead of a steel one and the rings on both pistons were worn down the metal on the pistons

What had happened is ,I have a lot of those wasp called Mud Dobbers around here and they had built their nest up under it on the cylinder walls,it had been a while between uses giveing them the time to build their nest, their nest being made of dirt and sand ate the rings right up on it when I turned it on, this was the noise and the puff of dust I had seen earlier, I looked and parts of the nest were laying on the floor under it,

This a poor design if you asked me, I wrote to the company that made the commpressor and complained about it but I never heard a thing from them, I also asked for a parts list so I could rebuild it , they have yet to send me that either,I bought a new smaller compressor with a twin cylinder that is sealed completely up, the old fashion kind that you have to put oil in ,so if any of you have this type of compressor here is a tip for you,

You might want to take some small mesh screen and put it around the top of the compressor, like window screen, and tape it along the bottom of the tank to keep these wasp out, it is a shame that a tiny wasp can destroy a $600.00 machine but they can, I hope this helps some of you

This is a Charge Air Pro, Made by the Devilbiss Air Power Co. by the way
 
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#2 ·
I made a service call about a year ago on a gas powered compressor and the intake on the engine was plugged by one of those things, had it choked down where it would barely run. Seems they just love air tools and hydraulic hoses along with the air intake on about anything. It don't have to be something that has sat idle for a while either I have seen them plug things in a day's time. :mad:
 
#3 ·
I can relate to that... I keep all of my disconnects covered with vacuum caps.
A few years ago I was in the shop and heard this buzzing noise... I found a HUGE mud nest on the underside of a cardboard box lid. The buzzing was from the new hatch of bees beating their wings against the box while digging out of their mud cells. I killed 'em... killed 'em all...
Mark
 
#5 ·
I have even tried spraying my air chucks and fittings with W/D 40 when not in use, this don't work either, I think they get high on it as they build their nest, it didn't slow them down a bit :mad:

Are there Mud Dobbers up north? I am originaly from Pa. but I don't remember ever seeing any,but I was young and didn't have tools laying around back then either :)
 
#6 ·
YES, there are mud daubers up North!!! The miserable things get into any small hole they can. Trans vents. Holley bowl vents. Any air tools that set for more than a couple of days. They seem to love the air filter housing on my air compressor. and the inner lid on my TIG welder..
 
#8 ·
They come in all sizes. One managed to squeeze through a tiny vent hole in an otherwise sealed auxillary cooling fan motor and built its nest right on the thermal overload switch. Cost me $110 for a rebuilt one. Same thing happened to the motor on a table saw, except I found it (by that pungent odor of overheated electrical devices) before the motor was ruined.

If you have a weed whacker that won't start, take the muffler apart and poke around every opening with a wire. Several times I've dug out a nest that way.

I keep a piece of masking tape over the air inlet of my paint guns. I didn't do that for my die grinder and had to dig dirt out of it.

I don't mind those neat TIG-weld looking nests on joists and walls, and mud daubers are a lot easier to get along with than those big red wasps or the yellow striped ones, but I hate those big mudball looking things you find in alternators and other places on engines. Oh well, at least they're fairly peaceful pollenators.

They also seem to love any piece of heater hose or vacuum line hanging around.
 
#10 ·
That really sucks about the Mercruiser :( just like you all I have a few small blocks in a shed on the end of my house along with some heads, and every hole nook and cranny is welded shut with their nest, it seems there should be some kind of spray that you could put on stuff that would run them away, like I said W/D40 won't do it, I wonder how they would like Pam, :D I think I will do some test on old air tools and see what might work, one good thing about them is I have never been stung by one of them :confused:

Ya'll don't forget, if you have an Oil-less compressor to put screen around it and to check for nest on the cylinder walls, I would hate for what happened to me happen to any of you when it could have been avoided, one never knows until it's to late, I still can't understand why the compressor co. never got back with me, seems like they might not make a rebuild kit for mine, all it would consist of is two new cylinder sleeves and two pistons, the rest of it is still like new :confused:

Has any of you ever heard of rebuilding one? Or are they "Run em till they break and throw them away"? Like a Yugo :D
 
#11 ·
Bugs:
I had a DeVilbiss Charge Air Pro that stopped working. I rebuilt it and the next time it quit was by sending its tiny little piston through the side of the cylinder. Scared the crap outta me. It's just a tank and a "5 HP" motor (riiiight, at 120V, it's really 3 HP) now.

Here's where I got the parts, but I think you'd be money ahead in the long run to just scrap it and get a good, oilled compressor:

http://www.msservice.net/
 
#12 ·
Thanks Grouch, I will check it out and see what they want for a rebuild kit on it and let you know, I most likely will just plumb my small oiled compressor into for more bulk air and throw the pump away, it's a damn shame though , the motor is almost new but it has a funky shaped shaft comeing out of it built just for the pump, I don't know if it could be used to power a oiled compressor or not, it has been so long since I looked at it all I can remember is the output shaft is weird, I beleive the rods hooked directly to it or something, I will see when I make up my mind as to what I am going to do with it, :confused: Thanks again, Bugs
 
#13 ·
I went to the site you sent me grouch, it came to $171.80 plus shipping just for the pistons(if you want to call them that) rods,sleeve and rings, I think I will pass, it is a poor design if you asked me from the get go, the pistons are nothing more than a flat 1/4" plate of aluminum,the rings are just a circle of plastic and the so called pistons are held to the rod with a single phillips head screw, I was thinking that it had wrist pins but it don't , the piston screws solid to the top of the rod and the piston wobbles(for lack of a better term) inside the cylinder sleeve as it rotates, I can surely see why yours can apart and I don't see how mine stayed together as long as it did, plus the fact that has been brought up about the noise they make it's just not worth it,

I will point this out to my son and I am sure he will say "Junk it" :mad: I see now why the company never got back to me, if I built something this crappy I would be ashamed of it too :D

Just say NO to oiless compressors, IMHO :)
 
#14 ·
Bugs, I didn't want to say anything but the fact is those oiless compressors would be a bad deal if they were free. Not sure what you have now or what it is used for but some of the bargain priced conventional design compressors can a good buy for hobby type body and such but be careful and check them out thoroughly before buying one.
 
#15 ·
You know the truth Oldred, I never even really checked out what it was until just now when you asked about it, :(

What happened is I went fishing one day(salt water) and on the way there I broke a leaf spring on my boat trailer due to rust and the other one wasn't far behind it, I cobbled it up along side of the road and went on fishing, my wife and I, it made for a bad day fishing however having to worry about the trip home,(50 miles) if we were going to safely make it or not,knowing how rusted up the bolts were on the trailer I had to have a compressor to run my impact so I could fix it, I had the springs and hardware at the house , I had just been putting off changeing them, anyway Lowes was on the way home so I swung in there leaveing the wife with the boat and truck to keep an eye on things,

She was tired and hot so I hauled *** in to the store and grabbed a fair looking compressor on wheels so I could do this as fast as possible, I figured I could always give it to my son later on when I got serious about buying a bigger one,(he has his own place now) :)

I just went out and wrote down the info on it,

It's a Campbell Hausfeld
5hp, 120V
20gallon tank,(I thought all this time it was bigger than that)
6.6 SCFM @40psi
5.8 SCFM @90psi
135 Max psi
and this is what it says on the compressor cover
3000hrs.
Twin Cylinder
100% Duty Cycle
3 year warranty

I like it just fine, it is very quiet compared to the Oilless one, I haven't tried to run my air sander on it yet but it does fine with all my air tools I have used on it so far, seems to build up fairly fast also,

I just use it for tinkering around the house on boats and vehicles , I don't do anything to serious with it and haven't used my sand blaster on it, I am sure this would kill it 100% duty cycle or not,

I want to say I paid like $389.00 or in that area for it, maybe less, I stuck it on my Lowes CC is the reason I can't remember how much it cost for sure, so for a spur of the moment purchase I guess it wasn't to bad, the wife wasn't to happy but she got over it :D
 
#16 ·
I noticed all the guys posting are from back east. I don;t think we have anything like that out here on the west coast (California), thank goodness, those little critters seem like a pain in the rear. We do have the wasps that build mud nests and birds that like to build them on your front porch.
 
#17 ·
This is what we are talking about camaroman, the mud nest building wasp,they build their nest up under the eaves of houses too,hell they ain't fussy they will build anywhere, we don't have the bird problem here in Fl. however, thank god :)
 
#18 ·
Mud dobbers and tools don't mix

Since we're on the subject of bugs, how about flies? I'm in the process of building a shop. It's all in the dry but no insulation or sheetrock. There is a room upstairs with a floor, but again, no insulation or sheetrock. There are 2 windows downstairs and 1 upstairs and the flies love to congregate around the windows. Like there's gotta be about o billion of ,em!! I spray them down and kill them off and vacuum them up and an hour later there's about a dozen buzzing around and more dead ones, too. Leave it a day and the sill is covered with dead ones. But there's never more than a dozen or so buzzing around at any one time. How do I get rid of these things for good? Anyone else have this problem? Besides the mess it's damned annoying!!!
 
#19 ·
523, I can relate to that only here in northern Tennessee it's Lady bugs MILLIONS of them! About this time of year they start coming in the house and there is no way to keep them out. It is a daily chore here to vacuum the dang things from the ceilings and light fixtures. For every one we kill a hundred comes to it's funeral and stays so about the only thing we can do is put up with them for a few weeks :mad:
 
#20 ·
Here in Florida we have the damn Love Bugs to contend with at certain parts of the year, do you have them in Tenn. and on up north? They love the smell of gas, it attracts them by the bazillions when you are trying to work on anything, they do a number on a paint job too, on the fly's I found a sticky fly trap at a local supply place, it's a round tube about 2ft. long and 1-1/2"in dia.it has this goo all over it and it is very sticky, I hung one up in a tree close to where I tinker on things and in a couple of days it was covered with fly's ,yellow fly's(that bite) and all sorts of critters, these work really good if you want to kill em without the poisonLet em kill their selves :)
 
#22 ·
bugs bugs bugs

for the guy with the lady bug problems ever read one of those pond magazines they sell all kinds of water plants and bugs ..praying mantis dragon flies and lady bugs

mud dabber suck
I had a pro weed eater that burnt a plug to it back to the shop (under warranty) 2 days later pull pull pull back to the shop freaking mud dabber clogged the exhaust S O B

of course in Florida we gots critters
rattlers
water moccasins
black widows
brown recluse
luv bugs or screw bugs
fire ants it never ends

heres some tips

if you encounter a wasp nest the honey comb type use a large bottle of dish detergent bottle and maybe a 1/2" of the soap in the bottom make sure the thing is full of liquid and squirt it will drop them better than any wasp spray

I always look under anything before I crawl under it ..

working in the bone yards Ive had just about everything come at me at one time or another theres not too much that P B Blaster wont kill eventually but dont use it indoors it tends to linger

ive had opossums ,raccoons ,squirrels, rats, snakes roaches, (some smokable ) spiders, snakes ,cats even some birds come out of a car its crazy

If the PB dont work the smoke wrench will.

if you have your own shop a dog and a yard cat will prove a endless resource in this department

one of the creepiest bugs is a mole cricket or how about taking a rhinoceros beetle in the shoulder on a motor bike ..ouch :spank:

SR66 :thumbup:
 
#23 ·
Changes in lattitudes...

It seems like the farther south you travel, the weirder it gets. In South Florida, not only do we have to deal with the mud daubers (I had a dune buggy that always seemed to have a mud plug in the mixture adjustment port,) we also have house geckos laying eggs in everything. These lizards will lay a clutch of 5 to 20 eggs (each a bit larger than a pea) in any barely-hidden space, and they seem to have a fondness for the windings of electric motors. I have to remember to slowly rotate my table saw and drill press by hand to clear out the eggs or risk making an ugly mess when the motor fires up. Things don't get much better if the eggs hatch, the geckos are nasty translucent-looking things.

On a related note, cicadas are attracted to the sound of my angle grinder for some reason, they'll go completely mental attack it. Very distracting.

The iguana invasion is another story, but at least they don't mess with our tools...
 
#24 ·
Since we're on the subject of bugs, how about flies? I'm in the process of building a shop. It's all in the dry but no insulation or sheetrock. There is a room upstairs with a floor, but again, no insulation or sheetrock. There are 2 windows downstairs and 1 upstairs and the flies love to congregate around the windows. Like there's gotta be about o billion of ,em!! I spray them down and kill them off and vacuum them up and an hour later there's about a dozen buzzing around and more dead ones, too.
You can have a 16' garage door opened and a fly cannot see that to get out, but have a little 2'x2' window and the stupid thing will go right to that to try and escape. also fly dung does not come off real easy either. I have two ceiling fans in the garage and it does seem to help somewhat but there is really no sure fire way to keep them out of the window except for hanging one of those ugly fly strips in front of it.
 
#25 ·
I am retired but I do some part time work for a local Pest Control Company. I spray the eaves and over hang of my house and shop and also around the windows and doors evey three months with a product called Suspend, it only takes a ounce and a half to a gallon of water. This will not completely eliminate the dirt daubers and wasps, but it will make a 90% improvement.
 
#26 ·
Henry, What about bumble bees? The dang things nest in the insulation in my shop walls and so far have been so well hidden in there that nothing seems to touch them. They also bore 1/2" holes in any soft wood such as wall studs and rafters. I have noticed that there seems to be two types of these bees which are identical except for one type is about half the size of the other, The smaller one is the one I am plagued with and these are very destructive and VERY aggressive! :pain: Any suggestions?
 
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