OK......so you think your air tank is too old to be safe ,
Do you drill a hole in it , or otherwise destroy it so no one else can try and use it ?
OK......so you think your air tank is too old to be safe ,
Do you drill a hole in it , or otherwise destroy it so no one else can try and use it ?
Streetwiseguy said:The expiry date on mine is from several years ago, and the one at the shop that was built before the safety nazis took over the world is even older.
Its only 125 psi. It won't hurt that bad when it ruptures. Probably.
Just remember that safety rules are written in the blood of dead or injured men. I've seen two people die because they ignored the " safety nszis". No lie. No joke. One didn't like the seatbelt on his forklift. The other didn't like machine guarding interlocks.
I once saw a small homeowner style air compressor that exploded. Apparently the pressure switch failed so it kept running, and then the relief valve was stuck shut. I didn't know the age of the tank, or whether it had failed because of a thin spot caused by corrosion. The tank was turned inside out, it looked like a big metal potato chip. It also kind of messed up the car that it was sitting next to in the garage.
In response to the question what to do if you think a tank is not safe anymore - drilling a hole in it is an option, or even cutting it up with a sawzall - this would allow you to do a post mortem on it to see if it's damaged by internal corrosion. Tubalcain on YouTube had a semi-famous video a few years ago where he had a compressor with a leak in the tank and he cut it in half to see what was going on; from the outside it was just a pinhole leak, but on the inside you could see the metal was shockingly thin for a pretty large area around that pinhole.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Very true. Been in OSHA environments my entire adult life, as my dad before me. Know some details on some of the blood safety rules are written in.
Not at all related to an arbitrary "end date" on a very low volume, very low pressure compressed air tank.
Well, a tire holds about the same amount of volume, and a tire exploding at 35psi can maim you, if not kill you, just from directed air pressure.
When in doubt, they're cheap and disposable, why risk it.
The arbitrary end date is based on a safety factor and worst case scenarios. Disposable 30lb refrigerant tanks are single use only because they don't have much safety factor. That didn't stop a lot of people from converting them to portable air tanks. (DOT will frown on you transporting them, too)
Cheetahs/tire blasters have a warning that if they are ever dropped, they are to be taken out of service. They can't judge the damage that may have happened to the weld bead on a fitting for a tool you are supposed to fill up with 5 gallons of 120psi air and hold up to your chest, so they err to the side of not killing people.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Testing a Submarine hull at 1.5 psi, is even more dangerous, and has to follow STRICT safety guidelines (due to the "per square inch")
But tires explode for a different reason than being discussed, just like sub hulls do.
An end date on a low volume, low pressure air tank USED CORRECTLY, is probably decided by the same type of committee as tow ratings 
ANY thing , used incorrectly, can be extremely dangerous.
If someone's air tank does explode, instead of just developing leaks after getting old, they probably should not have bought one, and tried to use it.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
A Cheetah, is also a completely different "animal" than a portable low pressure air tank. (i funny!)
A drop (and ensuing dent) is also complete different than an arbitrary end date.
Discussions are much easier comparing apples to apples.
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