1 1/2 years and still no low. lol 4x4 for life

[baggedb16sentra]

tank has 2 from what i have seen when i looked at my tank.

[Oh Damn, it's Sam]

So, is there a single female port on each end of the tank? There ought to be another port at the very bottom to allow for a drain.

I'll also need the port sizes on the tank. 1/4" NPT and 3/8" NPT are the common ones.

EDIT: Better yet, what brand / model of tank is this?

[baggedb16sentra]

i honestly don't think there is another port on the bottom. and ill find out the brand for you in a bit at work atm.

[baggedb16sentra]

now that i think about it i think there is only the 2 ports on the tank.

[baggedb16sentra]

1/2 and 1/4 for the ports?

[Oh Damn, it's Sam]

Alright, so, since you have what appears to be a steel tank and don't have a standard drain port, you've got a decision to make. Even though you live in a desert area, you're still going to get water buildup inside your tank, though at a much slower rate than, say, I do, here in the rainforest.

This condensation, limited though it may be, will be an opportunity for rust, which is the point of the drain on the tank, to get that water out of there at regular intervals. Thus, I personally don't trust steel tanks without the provision for draining them.

As far as I see it, you've got a couple of options:

1. You could get a different tank, one with a drain port.
2. You also could mount the tank either vertically or at a steep angle in order to allow water to flow out of the tank and back into a leader line. You then can install a drain somewhere on the leader line, and that'll get the water out of there. If you wanted to mount the tank at an angle, you actually could do a pretty cool-looking install.

You might think that adding a water trap will solve the problem, but a water trap never catches 100% of the water in the air, just a large percentage of it.

[baggedb16sentra]

what would you recommend? i just called my supplier he said i would need 2 water traps i believe the tanks are firestone tanks? $100 for 2 water traps with fittings to be shipped to me?

[baggedb16sentra]

my tank is actually a 3 gallon tank instead of a 5.. i guess what i need to do is figure out whether to buy a new tank and the water traps or just the water traps. Now that im thinking about this its weird nothing was said to me buy the person that sold me this stuff the kit was piece by piece do to my money situation but still.

[Oh Damn, it's Sam]

I wouldn't trust water traps to do the job for you. They catch a lot of the water, but not all. Water buildup will still be an issue.

Looking at Firestone's website, it looks like you've got a Firestone 9127, which has two 1/4" NPT ports. You can make that tank work, but it's going to limit you in a couple of ways. The small ports mean running any larger than 1/4" line to your valve block won't make much difference (technically there's some slight advantage to larger line due to some fluid dynamics concerns, but that's beyond the range of this discussion), so you're going to have the slow rise rate that Smokenyall was concerned about earlier in the thread. You'll also have to either have a port added for a drain, or mount the tank vertically to allow for water draining. That's pretty lame.

What I would do is sell that tank and buy something different. If you wanted, you could do a really sweet-looking install with something like this or one of AirLift's other tanks with the four ports on the face. I'd plumb your compressors into the ports on the end caps, one on either side, and run a hard line down from each of the side ports down to the floor, and then onwards to your valve block. Something like this super-realistic MS Paint drawing:



^ I always knew all those art classes would pay off one day

[baggedb16sentra]

alright i was thinking that also not sure who would need this tank though, kinda sucks being mislead by him but moving on with it now.

[Dano]

Im liking where this build is heading,
Definitely in for some bagged awesomeness.

[baggedb16sentra]

Im liking where this build is heading,
Definitely in for some bagged awesomeness.

haha thanks not much working out kinks for what i have now as you can see lol, i am excited to see this when im done just need to get everything i really need

[baggedb16sentra]

Since we are going through what i have for my car, is there a good way to tell if the bags i bought are going to fit for the rear and the front?

[Oh Damn, it's Sam]

Those look like Aero Sport bags for the front and are those Air House 1s or 2s for the rear?

I'd get under the car and start taking some measurements of the area that the stock springs hang out in, since those are what's going to be taken out and replaced with the bags. Cycle the suspension front and rear, watch its movement, and see if there's anything that's going to interfere with the volume the bags are going to take up.

In the front, additionally you've got the strut tube to worry about. Aero Sport bags fit over a maximum of a 2.14" tube, so get out there and measure the strut tube diameter.

In the rear, if I recall correctly, the spring is fairly tight to the shock tube. I'd cycle the suspension the best you can and watch how the spring and shock relate throughout the cycle, and see if a bag the size of an Air House will fit back there, or whether you need to have brackets made that'll offset the bag to one side, or whatever.

A lot of this is just getting under the car and observing and measuring, not to mention some trial-and-error with the brackets.

EDIT: Also, if you're going to ride low, you might consider whether you're going to run aftermarket shocks / struts or not. That may change the calculus to some degree, and you're certainly going to want to have the bag mounts fabbed onto whatever front strut you ultimately want to run.

[baggedb16sentra]

okay i have struts for the front already, hopefully they will fit for the rear just more stuff to replace i guess if not.