I've been looking around but everyone seems to be going with the 2.5 gallon tank.

Are there any other options for mounting a longer narrow tank or a couple of the 2.5's side by side? I don't have one yet but looking to get the most bang for buck on the unused space underneath the Jeep.

 

With a tank larger than 2.5 your going to be waiting a while for the tanks to fill up. And going to more than likely need 2 compressors.

 

I had a large tank where the muffler was probably. 10 gallons. I got it free from a old dump truck. I also had a viair 450c compressor. It would fill it up but you had to wait about 15 minutes from empty to 120 psi.

That said pretty much anything over 2.5 gal needs 2 compressors, or it will be slow to fill. I went to a 2 gallon viair tank with they synergy mounts and it fill up in probably less than a minute and maintains pressure better. I would almost recommend avoiding large tanks because they are so heavy especially with a skid plate on them.

If you are rock crawling I would go with a smaller air setup, because of weight and complexity. If your doing an expedition rig it might be more beneficial to go bigger. It all depends on what you want and how much money you want to spend.

Viair/quadratec/dominion all offer bolt in systems that just plain work. They are all rated and list what they are capable of. I built my system the second time identical to one if the quadratec systems and it works great. If you build your own system be aware you may waste some money you can't recover.

 

Those are some good points. My idea behind the larger tank was that I could turn on the compressor and let it fill up prior to stopping, in theory it will pump up more tires then the 2.5gal will before turning on and running off the compressor.

I don't do much, or really any, rock crawling so the size is not a complete deal breaker as long as I can keep it tucked up a bit and not lower then any other points on the undercarrage.

 

that's what the general idea is but with a smaller tank it stays filled and keeps pressure.

 

That is probably due to my lack of understanding on the function of air pumps vs tank size....

Does it really matter if the tank keeps pressure (I assume max pressure)? For example if the tire is going to 35psi, isn't anything in that tank going to be pumping into the tire?

 

The problem flexer is describing is that to air up a tire you need to maintain a higher pressure in the tank than in the tire. The higher that pressure is the faster that happens. In my case and me and flexer ride together. I would get about 2 tires aired up then the pump was struggling to keep the tank aired up. So it would air the tires up but it was so slow it would take forever. So we would have to wait 15 or so minutes with the jeep running to air up the tank then continue. My main problem with the whole thing was wasting gas airing the tank up. If you can size your tank and you compressor you don't have to wait as much and even though it's a smaller tank it never looses that pressure.

Now to your point if your tank was big enough to air the tires up without much need of a compressor yes your golden. Mine would air up my wife's car in like 2 minutes flat, but with 35s it would only do 2 before the tank was exhausted.

If I was going to have a big tank again I would plan to have 2 viair 450c compressors running it.