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I've seen pictures of one of those conversions, didn't know the specs. The one I saw ran the engine(upright) on 1 and 3 and used 2 and 4 for compression. I suppose there were some mechanical mods to the distributor and maybe cam, no details given. I just did the calculations for the above setup and a stock size engine, I get roughly 56 CFM at 2000 rpm at atmospheric pressure, no doubt will be less at 120 psi. Probably could get a different cam to give better results as a compressor, though. Much too big for my situation, I've no place to put it and not portable enough. Sandblasting takes a lot of air, I've not needed to do that, yet. Spray painting, it depends on what kind of gun you use. Some paint guns take close to 12 cfm, which puts you in the 6+ hp category on compressors, talking about $500-600 at least, for a cheapy. You also need to look at your electrical hookup, when you start getting into the serious horsepower, you have to go with 220v and 3 phase current. You will also need a DA sander, the pneumatic version sucks air like a demon, probably 5-6 CFM. What I've been getting by with is my little 4 cfm oilless and a 20 gal. tank. I can run the DA for about 5 minutes, normally enough for sanding down filler and fiberglass patches. I also use a touchup gun and prep and paint one body section at a time. The touchup gun behaves like a large airbrush, very controllable. The electrical system in this rental place is pretty primitive, hence the low horse compressor(120v, too). It gets the job done, though.Å*Èu go ahead with building one, make sure you have a large enough tank so the compressor isn't running all the time, the noise gets old pretty fast. Get some tool catalogs, Sears carries a full line of air tools, pretty expensive for what they are, but the descriptions tell how much air is consumed by each one. Harbor Freight also does the same, not that theirs are anything great, either. It'll give you an idea on compressor size needed for what you want to do, anyway. If you want a good spray gun, check the local body shop supply places, they're expensive, but the best quality. Another possibility is to rent some equipment, see what you like, then buy the same. On Wed, 7 Apr 1999 20:53:14 -0500, you wrote: >I'm thinking about buying an air compresor this summer to do some >sand-blasting + painting on my vw's in the future. A while back I saw an >add for a kit to change your air cooled vw engine into a compressor that >delivers 58CFM @120Psi. Does anybody have any experience with this kit, or >just any input on the kind of compressor I'll need? >Thanks in advance. > >Richard Steinburg >Winnipeg, Manitoba ------------------------------------------------------------------- List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org