TheDirtman

Not a fan of the air compressor in the engine bay but many do it. Vlair or Arb are the most robust compressors out there but if you are just filling tires you may want to get a small portable unit that will run off the battery. Generally much cheaper and you have the portability to take in other vehicles if you want. A CO2 tank may work for you as well and would be nice an portable but you have to have them filled which can be costly if you wheel a lot.

Millerca2

I keep going back and forth. Initially the wife said, no way do we need on board, go portable but with the limited storage space in the JK, the idea is starting to grow on her. Always decisions to make and money to spend with a Jeep

resharp001

There is no doubt that it's a tough pill to swallow, and it's really hard to justify the cost, BUT, if you do pull the trigger....there's no doubt that a year from now when you're in the middle of nowhere airing back up you'll think it was worth it.

I originally used a small portable compressor hooked to the battery. My only issue with that was duty cycle, but admittedly, it was a pretty cheap model. I looked at my long term build and finally pulled the trigger on real onboard air. If you're not worried about speed and ok taking your time, portable compressors are much more budget friendly.

Tilly

This may be overkill for your application but you can put together a belt driven york oba for under $500 (some do it for much less). It takes a little more work but you come out with a super reliable system that can do almost anything a shop compressor can do. That way if down the road you find that you do want run air tools you already have the system in place to do so.

jordy

2 is 1, 1 is none. I run both and ended up with an empty tank and a broken compressor at the end of an Easter Jeep Safari. It's currently about $20 to fill my tank and it lasts a couple trips if I use it exclusively to air up. I've got ARB lockers, so I have to have the compressor anyway. Redundancy is good though.

resharp001

If you could fill up CO2 at any gas station, it would sure be easier. I had CO2 tank for a planted fish aquarium, and it was such a pain in the ass to go get it filled even once a year or so as there were no real convenient locations for me. The one nice thing about CO2 is at least being able to run some tools on it. That's what really kills me about the compressor. In a perfect world either have both, or you have one and a buddy has the other.

jordy

I have a couple gallon tank in my system that could run air if I wanted to pack it along. Knocking on wood that I've not needed anything beyond a couple of band-aids to get back home. I don't have any desire to do overhauls/repairs that would require that much tooling on the trail.

Perfect world? Ha ha ha! That's why my tank was low at Moab, my buddy's compressor was acting up so I let him use my tank as well. Luckily it was the last day and we were done wheeling.

kmrtnsn

Been running the ARB Twin mounted under the hood and have had no complaints at all, it also drives our ARB lockers. When Airing up next to friends on the trail I'm usually done and airing their tires before they've finished two.

Rednroll

$500 air compressors mounted in the engine compartment? No thanks!

Great customer service? When every customer is paying at least twice as much as they should for an item, and the company sends you a supposed "free" replacement when/if 1 out of every 100 have a problem no questions asked, that's not customer service. That's called paying for a service replacement plan without even asking you if you wanted to pay for that service plan ahead of time.

It's good there are so many people that are really bad at simple math where they'll state "the price is high" but "they sent me a free replacement when I had a problem" but still not be able to figure out they already paid for their supposed "free" replacement. I guess, they could at least be happy, they received their replacement since the other 100 guys that didn't but still paid for it, there's some sales guy at ARB who does do the simple math and is saying "Cha-Ching!!!"

Rednroll

I never really understood the desire to be running air tools on the trail. Yeah, it's kind of "cool" and might get the job done quicker but my bag of hand tools work just as well and I never have to worry about running hoses, running out of air, or the compressor needing to take a break where I'm now sitting there with a worthless tool that doesn't work without air. What did offroad enthusiasts ever do to fix something on the trail before air tools and tools with rechargeable batteries existed? Oh yeah, they pulled out a set of wrenches and got to work and used a little elbow grease instead. I just make sure I pack a little elbow grease, maybe there's Jeepers out there that don't own any.