[67drake]

Figured I’d throw this out there in case someone is in the same situation.
I had an old Craftsman air compressor from the late 80’s. Still worked well but the tank started to leak around the bung welded to the tank bottom where you drain the water out. Argh. I figured it had a long life, so I got my use out of it. Looking at new ones I realized to get a similar size one, CFM wise, was going to be expensive as heck.
Being the cheap arse that I am I set out to piece together a new one. The biggest challenge turned out to be finding a tank. Local scrap yards and Craigslist turned up nothing. A local radio station has a on air garage sale site on Saturday morning. I called in and asked if anybody had a 30-60 gallon tank. I got a few calls and ended up buying a 60 gallon tank for $50 from a local guy.
I figured as long as I’m going to do this I might as well tune up the motor and pump too. I found a local shop that still rebuilds electric motors. He charged me $56 to go over the motor to recondition it. He said that the GE motor I had would have cost at least $300 to replace, and said this one was in great shape now. I then tore the pump down (which leaked oil)and found no bad bearings and it seemed to still have good compression. I just cleaned the oil pan and reed valves and put it back together using bulk gasket material I had on hand to make my own gaskets.
I did have to fabricate a simple bracelet to mount the motor to the new tanks mounting plate. Then a trip to the hardware store to make a new pressure line and compression fittings. I also bought some new grade 8 bolts to mount the pump to the new tank. .
Total cost to me was about $112 start to finish! I spent maybe 4-5 hours putting it together. I’ll see how it goes, but all is good so far. I wish I could rebuild more things around my house like this!