In 1996 I bought a new upright air compressor with an eighty gallon tank. The unit stands in my shop agains the wall. I did service the unit and changed the oil some fifty hour of use after I bought it. Over the past yrs. I always checked the oil in the sight glass by glancing at it while it was against the wall. Well glancing at it is not enough !!

maybe six weeks ago I decided to service the unit and bought new compresssor oil for. it. This past Saturday I finally got around to changing the oil and checking things out including the intake air filter.

To MY SUPRISE I FOUND THE OIL LEVEL TO BE WAY BELOW the operating range. In fact it was so low I did not dare to start the machine to get the oil warm before draining it.

I consider myself lucky. I drained what I could and put new oil in the pump. The air filter was also to the point where it was not doing much good. The spounge part of it was deterioited to the point of almost gone.

My compressor was neglected and standing against the wall was easy to walk past and take things for granted. From now on I will tag and check the compressor on a regular basis.