The motor turns but won't turn belt

by Sara Levesque
(St. David, Maine)

My air compressor is not working. when I remove the belt and turn it on the motor spins so that is working but it is not turning the other wheel...How do i fix it to make the wheel turn???

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Bill says...

Magic?? :-)

The motor spins, but with the belt on and connected to the pulley on the pump, the motor... what? Stops, hummms, doesn't do anything?

First thing to do is to unplug the compressor and open the tank drain valve to drain the system down to zero. This is a good opportunity to drain the tank, as maybe you haven't been draining it each time you use the compressor?

With the belt off, try to turn the pulley on the pump. It's sometimes hard to do. Can you turn it at all?

If the pump pulley cannot be turned at all, or is very, very difficult to turn, something may have failed in the pump making the turning of the pump pulley require more force to rotate than your electric motor can generate.

If you can rotate the pulley by hand, then your pump could be OK.

Put the belt back on, close the drain tank and plug the compressor back in. What happens?

Dumping the pressure in the tank reduces the chance that it's the unloader valve that failed.

With the belt on, if the motor won't turn, it could be that the motor itself is failing.

Good luck,

Bill