Welcome to Botches Off -Road. Join us as we talk
about everything from gear reviews to trail stories,
tent camping to rock landing, and all things
to do with the outdoors. All right. Today, I'd
say it's special, but you hear from Tyler every
week, or you should be. If not, go listen to
Snail Trail. Yep. It's not worth it. Don't do
it. Oh, it's totally worth it. We got Tyler from
Morphlate over here. He's going to be answering
some of our inflation deflation questions. Probably
radios too, because we don't have Gavin or Jimmy
to stop us. We're going to go wild. So yeah,
I've been seeing a lot of people say that the
all top compressor or the, what's that one that
Gavin bought that I hate? Thor. Thor's lightning.
Yep. But they're the same as your Morphlate compressor.
I know that's not true, but we need you to need
you to set the story straight here. Yeah. Um,
so God, where do we begin? The, the all top is
actually made at a different factory. Um, I know
what factory it is. Um, I, the, the interesting
thing about the all top is that the, uh learning
algorithm that drives our automatic inflation
and deflation in the psi pro compressor as well
as our air hubs that algorithm um i had a direct
hand in developing and figuring out you know
how often do the pressure checks um whether it
needs to keep going or not how to figure out
the airflow of whatever air system it's using
so you can use uh shop air a power tank a twin
arb a more flat and all top at a by air a harbor
freight cigarette lighter compressor it doesn't
care what air source you use it kind of learns
as it goes so i had a direct hand in building
that algorithm and and getting it nailed down
to work appropriately and then the algorithm
is getting patented so that learning algorithm
is getting patented in China as well as in the
United States. And so the all top compressor
is made at a different factory and they reverse
engineered the algorithm, quote unquote. And
I haven't got my hands on one of their PSI Pro
compressors, quote unquote, to see if they really
nailed the algorithm or how it actually works
because. as far as i know we're the first ones
to develop that learning algorithm there's a
couple other ways to do automatic inflation and
from i like to call brute force hacking so you
can use solenoids to open and close solenoids
very rapidly essentially once every half second
and every time the solenoid closes a pressure
sensor takes a reading of the pressure in the
system And if you're there at your target pressure,
it stops. It doesn't reopen the solenoid. If
it is not there yet, then it reopens the solenoid
for half a second. Let's air in, close the solenoid,
does another pressure check. So it does that
very rapidly for a very long time. And the downside
to that is it's really noisy because solenoids
opening and closing every half a second for the
length of your air uptime is very noisy. airflow
time, time that the air is going into the tires
is only half of what it could be. So your overall
time doubles. So that's one way to do it. The
other way to do it is to limit the valve in which
the airflow goes through so that the valve bottlenecks
your whole system so that it is the lowest airflow
possible. That way you can run a mathematical
formula off of that known airflow. Which is really,
really slow. That's actually how the ARB links
system works. And so it just, it takes a really
long time. I mean, you're looking at 45 minutes,
40 to 45 minutes to inflate and deflate. And
by limiting that valve, you're also creating
an intentional bottleneck in your air system,
which means that. the compressor, if it puts
out way more airflow than that bottleneck, you're
just backlogging your compressor with pressure
and creating a higher working pressure on the
compressor, which generates a lot more heat,
makes gaskets and seals fail, pulls more power
from the motors, which puts stress on your wiring
and all your electrical components on that circuit.
So those are the two ways that inflation and
automatic inflation has been done. historically
and then we created that learning algorithm or
we helped create that learning algorithm um so
i don't know exactly how all top is doing it
i don't know exactly what algorithm they're using
um but they figured it out and um they are making
a a better priced compressor a better price point
compressor um but as far as i know they're still
using the old gen 1 components so When we first
brought compressors to the market for Morphlate,
they were pretty much identical to the Nappa
MaxiTrack, the very first version of Nappa MaxiTrack
compressor. They're made at the exact same factory.
And I'm honestly not sure who got to market first,
us or Nappa. But what happened was that compressor
was a white labeled model. So the factory owns
the design for it. And it had no pressure cutoff
switches. It had the thermal cutoff sensor was
kind of iffy in it. It had relays instead of
a board that helps control everything. And so
what a lot of people ended up doing was they
bought the NAPA compressor and changed a bunch
of stuff on it. So they added the pressure cutoff
switches and you have the NAPA MaxiTrack Facebook
pages that come out for modifying those compressors.
Dirt Lifestyle Nate. did an awesome video on
modding some of those compressors. And so what
I did was when we both released that compressor,
Napa, obviously a much bigger company, they bought
way, way more than I did. So we ran out of stock
really quickly while they maintained the stock.
So they kind of got credit for being first to
market, quote unquote, with that design, that
white labeled compressor. I realized as soon
as we got the compressors that. They were decent,
but there was a lot of upgrades that could be
done to make them way better, including all those
mods that people were doing to the Nappa Maxi
Track compressors. So I went back to the drawing
board and I worked with the engineering team
at the factory to implement a bunch of those
changes. So the pressure cutoff switches, and
we did an 80 -120 instead of what is standard
in a lot of compressors. 90 to 100 on and 150
off and so we decided that you know we're really
focusing on the off -road space we want to make
a product that works awesome for off -roading
so we limited the pressure cutoff switch to turn
off the compressor at 125 so that people are
not inadvertently hooking up their compressors
to their ARB lockers and immediately blowing
out the seals in their lockers Which has always
kind of fascinated me because that's what ARB
sets their compressors to, 150 cutoff. And they
recommend running that straight into the locker
solenoids for their lockers, which blows seals.
Lockers are low pressure actuation things. So
you don't want to hit them with more than really
like 100 PSI. You're going more than 100 PSI,
you're risking blowing seals in your lockers.
So we wanted to limit it pretty lower, but we
wanted to also be able to do RV tires, which
is 110 PSI. So we picked 125 as our cutoff. We
added in a solid state board rather than a series
of relays and then re -released that compressor.
And that was our quote unquote, our Gen 1 compressor.
We did that one for about a year, year and a
half before I started realizing that. It's a
good compressor, but it gets hot. It generates
a ton of airflow. So the name of the game with
any compressor that is a piston -driven compressor,
screw compressors are a little bit different,
but piston -driven compressors, kind of like
your vehicle, generate a lot of heat because
you're compressing air and that generates heat,
just a lot of heat. If you think about it, a
diesel engine is able to ignite. fuel without
any spark, any flame source at all because they're
just compressing. That's how hot air gets under
extreme compression. So with compressors, they
generate a lot of heat and the name of the game
is keeping them cool. The cooler you can keep
a compressor, the longer it's going to last,
the more efficient it's going to run, the longer
duty cycles you can run it on, the more vehicles
you can air up, the more tires you can air up,
etc. So you can just use it for way more uses.
the more you can improve the heat dissipation
of the compressors. So we realized that about
a year, year and a half into this compressor
venture. And so I started figuring, you know,
dissecting the entire compressor and seeing what
components we could make out of different materials
in the compressors in order to have really good
heat dissipation, but also keeping prices reasonable.
So like titanium, awesome heat dissipation material
but it's super fucking expensive so you can't
you can't make compressors out of titanium so
we wanted to use something else we wanted to
stick with aluminum aluminum dissipates heat
great it's two and a half three times something
like that better than steel on heat dissipation
being able to draw heat away and dissipate it
in open air and so we did a bunch of different
things to the internals of the compressors in
order to help manage and mitigate heat so the
first thing that we did was um if you look at
i'm showing you guys here on the camera this
is a heat sink off of one of the gen 1 compressors
now you guys can't tell this very well but this
is actually a plastic heat sink so if you think
it would work It doesn't work at all. Plastic
insulates. It does not sink heat off. So if you
look at our current heat sink, I don't know if
I can do this side by side and hold the microphone.
So you see how the plastic one has a lot more
fins on it than the aluminum one? The aluminum
one we designed and essentially... From everything
that I've been able to research and compressors
I've been able to buy that look like our compressors,
if somebody is running this heat sink with a
bunch of extra fins on it, chances are it's a
plastic heat sink on those compressors out in
the market right now. It's that Gen 1 white labeled
compressor that the factory still sells to anybody
that asks. You can call up the factory and say,
hey. I want to make some compressors. I want
a compressor. I just want it to be purple and
have my logo on it. And that's white labeling,
right? So they own the product and then they
will put whatever color and logo that you want
on it and sell it to you. And that's the version
that this comes with is a plastic ABS heatsink,
which just insulates your cylinders, retains
heat, and slowly cooks your compressor to death,
really. But one of the interesting things about
plastic heat sinks is that they don't really
get hot because they're insulating your cylinders.
And so a lot of people will do temperature checks
on these heat sinks from the compressors and
be like, the compressors barely don't really
run hot. You can put it back in the bag because
the heat sinks and the components of the compressor
are not hot to the touch. they're not going to
melt the bag. So they think that the compressor
then is running very cool. And in actuality,
what's happening is it's just insulating and
cooking your compressor's internals rather than
letting that heat get to the exterior of the
compressor and dissipate. So check your compressors.
If you have one of these heat sinks with a ton
of fins on it compared to one of these guys,
chances are it's probably a plastic heat sink.
So you don't want plastic heat sinks on things
that get hot. So that was the first big thing
we noticed. I was like, those are absolutely
useless. You just can't run a compressor with
plastic heat sinks. So the name of the game is
keeping them cool and letting them dissipate
heat. So the other next thing that we noticed
on the heat sink itself, if you look, let's see
if I can do this with one hand. if you look on
this side i'm going to show you guys on the camera
that i'll have to make sure to get pictures from
you so we can put them in the show notes oh cool
yeah so this heat sink this is the the metal
cylinder and there is the the cylinder of the
compressor you have a piston that goes up and
down in here um it's typically oriented this
way when it's running yep but That piston goes
up and down the same way an engine piston does,
and it creates air pressure through a series
of open and input and output valves. So this
is kind of like the side view, right? And if
you look at the heat sink, it's only contacting
that cylinder in four spots. 12, 6, 3, and 9,
right? Yep, yep. So not only is it plastic, it's
retaining heat, but you have a bunch of these
air gaps in the corners here. where it's also
retaining heat in there. The heat is not really
going to the heat sink and dissipating to open
air. So we completely redesigned the heat sink
as well. Oh, that's much better. To be a perfect
fit on the cylinder here. So you have a 360 degree
contact of the cylinder to the heat sink. So
that was the next big change we did to help with
heat dissipation. And the cylinder here is aluminum.
This is you guys can't tell in the video there,
but it is very lightweight compared to this mild
steel, carbon steel one. So having the aluminum
cylinder as opposed to the carbon steel, you
get two and a half, three times more better heat
dissipation than the carbon steel one. So having
the aluminum cylinder. um combined with an aluminum
heat sink that has proper contact with the cylinder
you're just able to help get that heat out of
the compressor and dissipate it to open air way
better than anything else out there that has
any one of these three components set up this
way a carbon steel cylinder a heat sink that
only contacts in four spots or a plastic heat
sink so That was the big thing we did on the
internals to help with heat dissipation. We also
changed the material of the piston rings that
seal the piston to the internal of the cylinder
so that the material is a much better wear resistance,
abrasion resistance, and heat resistance. In
essence, so it's just going to last you a lot
longer before that piston ring ever looks at
failing. And so far, ever since we did that,
we have not ever had a single piston ring fail,
which has been... pretty cool to see that that
that design change worked um so along with those
that's kind of the big internal stuff um the
external stuff which you can tell right away
when looking at our compressors compared to everybody
else's um we have a stainless steel hose output
hose on our compressor um we did that for a couple
of reasons um one Every other compressor comes
with pretty much a black rubber hose, and it's
pretty much a pure rubber hose. So what happens
to rubber over time? Dry ruts. Yeah, it breaks
down. It gets hard. It hardens. It does not do
well with a lot of heat cycles going through
it. It's also very susceptible to UV degradation.
Yep. And so over time, as those black rubber
hoses kind of start disintegrating, degrading,
getting really stiff and hard, they're just going
to start cracking and failing on you, especially
when they start getting stiff or hard disintegrating.
And then you're kind of coiling them in these
tight little packs to get back into the compressor
bag and then get thrown around in the back of
an off -road vehicle. Those hoses, we had...
After about two years, we started seeing failures
in those black rubber hoses. So that was number
one. We wanted to increase the durability and
the lifespan of these output hoses for people.
Number two is that stainless steel hose acts
as another heat sink to the compressor. So in
between the two cylinders of the compressor,
there's a... aluminum manifold that goes between
them that hides underneath the black cover with
the user controls and the control board. That
stainless steel hose is the outlet of that manifold.
So the aluminum manifold is now drawing heat
off of the heat sinks as well. And then the stainless
steel hose is drawing heat off of that aluminum
manifold. That stainless steel hose drops 100
degrees Fahrenheit from the manifold. to the
coupler and so there's a couple of things going
on that for the user when that happens one is
you're getting really good heat dissipation off
of the compressor so better heat dissipation
longer lasting compressor number two is that
coupler when you go to disconnect it after airing
up your vehicle is not going to be quite as hot
as every other coupler on the market that ends
up right next to or on attached directly to a
compressor. So compressors can output upwards
of 200 to 250 degree temperatures. A twin ARB
in an engine bade definitely hits that 250 degree
temperature mark. Other ones that are more open
air, not in an engine bay, they'll average around
200 to 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Our couplers on
that output of the hose don't really ever get
above 150. So 150 ends up being pretty much the
max. And they typically run around 120 to 150,
which is still hot. You don't want to touch that
directly with your hands. But it's way better
than having a 250 degree temperature coupler
that you're having to touch through gloves or
with your shirt or something else. So that stainless
steel hose. does actually quite a bit for the
compressor as a heat sink and the user as your
usability and then the last feature we added
to the gen 2 compressors was our purge valve
so we have a manual purge purge valve on the
back side of all of our compressors what that
does for you the way the reason why we originally
put it in and installed it was so that we could
release the pressure from the compressor so that
you're not storing the compressor with 125 psi
internal internally to the compressor if you
do that you end up putting a lot of stress 125
pounds per square inch on your piston rings on
your valves on your seals any sealant and thread
whatever is in the compressor all the way out
to your coupler So being able to purge that when
you're done, that 125 PSI does go a long way
to helping a compressor last longer as well.
One thing we didn't realize. that it does that
we quickly figured out because we do a lot of
off -roading here at higher elevations in California.
So we can go anywhere from 6 ,000 to about 8
,000 feet, 8 ,500 at the very top end in the
Sierras here. And we realized that the purge
valve allows us to calibrate all of our digital
sensors and the digital gauges built into all
of our compressors. So if you can calibrate your
compressor and your digital gauges, your digital
sensors to atmospheric pressure, that gets you
to be able to put precise and accurate pressures
into your tires according to whatever you're
looking to do. We never really marketed that,
but it was just kind of like one of those things
like, oh, sweet. That's awesome. We can do that.
And then. About a year and a half, almost two
years after we were running the Gen 2 compressor,
which has all those upgrades we just talked about,
some of our competitors started marketing that
they're the first ones to do a digital calibration
for elevation to their compressors. And I was
like... um we've been doing that for like a year
and a half two years before you guys started
implementing those so we just haven't really
been marketing it um so we were able to kind
of call them on it and they're they're still
they're still going with their marketing so um
but yeah those are the main differences of the
compressors it was unfortunate that when we went
through kind of the redesign on the internals
we didn't take the time to redesign the entire
compressor because that is our biggest, I don't
want to say downfall. It's our biggest struggle
point. It looks to ever the average consumer,
like we have the same compressor as everybody
else on the market. And really when you start
digging into it, we don't, we've done a lot of
upgrades on the internals. We have contracts
from the factories that state that they won't
make. our spec sheet for other companies. And
so far they've held true to it. You do see some
of the features showing up on other compressors
in the market. Some compressors have picked up
the aluminum heat sinks. I haven't taken them
apart to see if they're properly shaped to the
cylinder yet. I have. I have. Oh, yeah. We built
an all -top. It has the same, you know, it's
got the metal manifold like that. Okay. It does
not go all the way around the cylinder like that.
Yeah. It's only got the four contact points.
Yep. The big thing I noticed when I was taking
apart that all top, and you didn't touch on this,
they've got these tiny little reeds that are
the valves. And every single one of those little
reeds was bending under normal operating system.
I plumbed mine into a tank, but before I plumbed
it into a tank, they were already bending, so
we had to flip them over to re -strengthen them.
But the all -top, we had three of them fail that
we built. All three of them were kicking out
the screws that hold those valves on. It would
kick them out and send them through the piston.
Oh, geez. Yeah. Wow. And that goes to quality
control, right? Everybody should know that in
dealing with China, their number one priority
is just increasing their bottom line profit as
much as possible. So if they can find ways to
cut corners on quality, they will. if you don't
have it specifically and explicitly marked out
in your spec sheet as to what you want them building
and how you want them building it um they will
totally skip the corner if they can um and so
like Having a torque value for those screws or
having a call out to use a thread sealant of
some sort on those screws is something that we
had to do because we had one of our factories
before. Mess with those and we had the same issue.
So the quality control is another thing that
you really, really have to do in manufacturing.
The Chinese manufacturers and factories, they
will follow whatever you want, but you have to
be very explicit about what you want. And so
we've had to get our factory to set up a full
separate quality control process for our compressors
and our specs than what they do for everybody
else. We have our own quality control line at
the factory that we pay a little bit more for.
But when we do that, it comes down to we don't
have those simple little failures, like having
the reed valve screws fall out and chew up your
cylinders. And we also, not only that, but we
also go through every single unit at our warehouse
in Sacramento, California, before shipping it
out to people. And so we'll catch tiny little
things like blemishes, scratches on the unit.
We'll catch a leaky coupler on the output hose.
We'll catch, you know, one of the downsides of
doing stainless steel braided hoses is the stainless
steel braid will come out in certain parts and
create little pokies. So we catch those, swap
the hoses out for people. So doing a dual 100
% quality control process has allowed us to really
stand behind the compressors and start doing
a lifetime warranty. on all of our compressors
we found that doing all those upgrades to the
internals and really making the compressors dissipate
heat better than anything else um that we weren't
really getting warranties back anymore with the
gen 2 compressors it was pretty cool our warranty
rate is under half a percent um so we were like
you know what i want to put my money where my
mouth is and let's just put a lifetime warranty
on it so Doing everything that we do allows us
to really stand behind everything with confidence
that when somebody buys something from us, they
shouldn't have issues with it. It should last
them a very, very long time. Is it going to last
forever? We're not sure yet. We haven't been
in business for 10, 15, 20 years to be able to
see how long these compressors are really going
to last. But the Gen 2 compressors, we've been
able to triple the duty cycle. from the gen ones
so the gen ones running four tires at a time
you're looking at about 15 to 20 minutes on and
10 to 15 minutes off so roughly a 50 duty cycle
um and with how much air these compressors put
out 15 to 20 minutes on doing four tires at a
time that you're really looking at like three
to four vehicles you can get aired up before
you're hitting thermal cutoffs And now with our
Gen 2 upgrades, we can run these things 45 minutes
doing four tires at a time before they hit a
thermal cutoff. And the thermal cutoff is the
internal temperature around 230, 235 degree Fahrenheit.
That's when the thermal cutoff kicks in. So we've,
and we actually, when we were doing the duty
cycle tests, we just called the test because
we got to 45 minutes and it wasn't cutting off.
So we're like. who's going to try and run this
for 45 minutes straight airing up? I mean, you
can get, what is that? Eight, nine vehicles done
in 45 minutes, something like that. So we just
called the test at 45 minutes and called it good
there. But what we do every year is we love doing
events where we get to set up kind of inflation
and deflation stations. And so Jeepers Jamboree,
we're lucky enough to be right next to the Rubicon
up here in California. And we have good relationships
with all the organizations that run the Rubicon,
including Jeepers Jamboree. So at the end of
Jeepers Jamboree on Sunday, when everybody's
coming out of the trail, we go and set up inflation
stations in Tahoma at the Tahoma staging area.
And we air up. over 500 vehicles in a half a
day using eight compressors. That's crazy. So,
um, it's, it's just, it's, and every time we
go and do that event, I'm always sitting back
and wondering when we're going to have a compressor
fail doing 500 vehicles and they never do. We've
been using the same compressors, I think for
three years in a row now, um, to do. that event
plus more throughout the year. So it just goes
to show that when you really look and do the
research and build something that's specifically
designed to handle what you're trying to do,
you can make a pretty damn good product. And
as long as you do the quality controls on your
end to make sure that the customer gets what
you made and what you intended, it's a pretty
cool thing. Yeah, and now you've taken even farther.
You've got the hub, which I'm starting to see
clones of, by the way. Oh, yeah. Which I just
sent one to the chat there on Jitsi. I think
that's crazy because the hub is such a unique
piece already to then copy it and make it worse
and sell it. It's almost the same price, too.
Yeah. Yours is what, like 250 or something like
that? Yeah, 250. And the clones are right there
at the $249 .99 mark. Yeah, so there's a funny
story about that. I'm not going to name any brands.
I'll let the consumers and the listeners try
and figure out which ones they are. But when
we were the first ones to... really be working
on the air hub project with the factory um and
this is the same factory that makes the same
compressors for everybody else it's a really
cool factory they do a bunch of solar and technology
stuff as well as air compressors um and so they
were able to combine technologies which is something
that i've always been interested in And so we
immediately hit it off, me and the owner of the
factory, when we were trying to develop the PSI
Pro algorithm. And then our idea was to create
a deflation algorithm because deflation algorithms
have never existed. And that's not really something
that you can do really well other than by the
brute force methods. Right. And it's not just
as easy as reversing the inflation algorithm.
So we worked with him after we'd got the inflation
algorithm done and perfected. We'd worked with
him on the deflation algorithm as well to work
all of that into one unit. And then we were able
to tell him, hey, this unit's pretty good. It
needs to be done this way, though, in order to
survive off -roading atmospheres, off -roading
environments. It needs to be. No bigger than
this. Our outputs and inputs have to be oriented
in these configurations. You should make it out
of this material. And so we went through all
those steps with them. Went through two or three
different alpha tests of samples before we landed
on our air hub that we have today. Unfortunately,
once we landed on that air hub, we sent it to
production. And one of our competitors happened
to be visiting the factory while our air hub
was on production line. The owner and the engineering
team of the factory grabbed one of our air hubs
off of our production line, handed it to our
competitor. and said this is what we're making
for more fleet and this take this as an engineering
sample we can't make it for you but we own the
rights to the technology that drives what it
does um and so we have our own design with our
own spec sheet and everything they technically
own the technology um and so yeah they they said
here's what we can do we can build you your own
air hub but this one's more flights take it home
play around with it and test it see what it does
and then we can make one for you our competitor
immediately took that home and put it on instagram
while we were going through our teaser campaign
to launch the air hub like we were just about
to start the teaser campaign of something new
and big is coming um This thing that revolutionized
the off -road industry, how people view airing
up and airing down tires. But we hadn't given
any pictures of what it was, any idea of size
or what this thing was. And then all of a sudden,
our competitor shows up with our air hub on Instagram
saying, look, this is our, I almost called it
by its name, what they call it. This is our air
hub. um we designed this we came out with it
we're launching it pre -orders up now and i was
like are you fucking kidding me what the hell
and so i'm starting to look into this and i got
in touch with the factory i was like yo why do
they have one of our air hubs like this is and
they're they're saying that they that this is
theirs that they made it he goes no no no no
and he explained what happened during their visit
and i was like well that's not what they're saying
what they're telling everybody So somebody is
wrong here. And if you are going against our
contracts and selling our product to somebody
else, that's going to be a very big deal. And
I'm going to have to get lawyers involved and
all this other stuff. And he goes, no, no, no.
And he sent me the emails back and forth between
him and my competitor stating what had happened
and that it was stated. This is an engineering
sample, blah, blah. And I was like. First off,
shame on you for giving him our product as an
engineering sample. But B, shame on them for
going against everything you said and trying
to state that it's their thing. They had a picture
of it on their website that they were collecting
pre -orders from. And so I had to get my lawyers
involved with them there. And that was even after
we had a design patent submitted in the United
States and processing. And so one of the big
issues with patent law is that you can't go after
somebody until the patent is confirmed, right?
It's been approved. So just because it's a processing
does not mean you get to go after somebody, which
is unfortunate because the processing can take
two to three years sometimes. And so we went
after them and sent the lawyers, we sent them
cease and desist letters. and said you guys need
to send that back to us you can't have it and
they didn't send it back to us what they ended
up doing to get around the cease and desist letters
was they built an aluminum box and put our air
hub in the box and then continued taking it out
to shows and events um and i have pictures of
it all too um so yeah it's it was it was just
one of those things where you start you start
looking at and paying close attention to what
companies are doing in the off -road industry.
And you start seeing which ones are actually
doing their research, actually doing the work
to make stuff and be a part of the off -road
community. And then you start seeing which ones
are just there to make a quick profit and move
on. And so, yeah, just all the listeners out
there, keep your eyes open and pay attention
to the specifics and details. yeah you're uh
that's crazy man just the fact that they can
just copy it like that and just do whatever with
it yep yeah and it was it was one of those things
where you know a couple years ago i had a another
company um asked to purchase more flight acquire
more flight and i was like i'm not ready to sell
out but i'm going to draw this out and see where
this goes um and their reasoning the way they
approached it was Hey, you need to let us buy
you or you don't have any intellectual property,
intellectual protection. So no patents, no trademarks,
et cetera. So we're just going to come into your
market, take it over and kick you out anyways.
So let us buy you or else. And I kind of strung
them along for about six months. And then finally
came up with some excuse. Hey, this isn't fair
to you guys. I'm sorry. We just got to cut this.
But it taught me a lot that. they were right.
I didn't have patents. I was being naive in thinking
that people would stick to, if they develop something,
then they would want to be pushing it and selling
it, not let's rip off other people's products
and go to market with it to try and kick them
out of the market and take over. I thought that
the off -road industry was a little bit better
than that. But there's definitely players in
the off -road industry that behave that way.
And I'm learning who those players are. So since
then, I've put a lot of effort into learning
patent law, trademark law, intellectual property
protections, and putting those things in place
in order to protect the future of this company,
all the employees, jobs. all to ultimately all
of our customers too because if we go out of
business because we lost our spot in the market
then customers don't get those forever warranties
anymore those lifetime warranties they don't
get the customer service they don't get to see
their money that they spend at more flight go
back into their trails nationwide um with our
trail donation programs so um i had to learn
that was that was a tough uh uh lesson to learn
but um two years into that one um i think we've
got a lot of really good things in place to really
protect um the future of the company and the
stuff that we do come out with design and r &d
and a release to the public so which you've got
new stuff coming that you should tease us or
no you shouldn't tease us you should just tell
us what it is yeah we're getting ready um here
i think it's going to be about two to three weeks.
It really depends on the government shutdown
right now. Customs and imports are just getting
extremely backed up. They're running skeleton
crews in customs and CBP. So things are just
taking a really, really long time to get processed
through customs. So I'm hoping... I could wait
and release this if you want to just tell us
what it is. Maybe I'll tell you off air once
we're done recording. But it is going to be new
hose kits. I will drop that one. I'll tell you
guys what it is. I'm not going to tell you exactly
what we're doing to them yet. But it's going
to be we're revamping all of our hose kits across
the board. We found a new way to make hoses,
which is pretty rad and works awesome. for uh
what we do in the off -road space and the environments
we're in um with these four tire air hoses systems
yeah that's that's really exciting yeah because
you're because you use a different rubber than
most people do or at least a different material
i don't know it's exactly rubber yep um the the
two that i've seen that are really good are your
hoses are really good and then apex designs I
don't know if you know who they are. Their hoses
are really good as well. Yep. Yep. But yours,
theirs are a little different and you got to
cut them and make them fit to your size. They're
four -way inflation. I'm eh, whatever. But the
rest of what you can do with their stuff is cool.
Yours is just a one -stop shop. Everything works.
It's set up. You're like the apple of a... air
inflation yeah no it's definitely um we make
we we like to think of making an ecosystem of
air inflation stuff right and deflation and so
we don't we like to make it very modular so that
people if they don't have 600 bucks to spend
all at once you can just buy the hose kit and
start off with the four tire hose kit running
four tires off of any air compressor will make
your air compressor be happier. It distributes
the airflow and makes it so that you're running
your air compressors efficiently. You're not
getting backlogs of air pressure on your compressors,
which helps them run cooler, makes them last
longer. You don't blow out gaskets and seals.
You don't pull more power and melt wiring harnesses.
So anytime you get the chance to run four times,
it does a lot of really cool things for your
compressor. And then once your compressor, if
it ever does finally die, if it doesn't, then
you can get an air hub. And the cool thing about
the air hub is because of the way the learning
algorithms work, they're universal. You can put
them on any air source and it makes any air source
into an automated air source. So you can take
your twin ARB and hook up our hoses with the
air hub. And now your twin ARB is a completely
automated ARB. And then in the future, if you
have an engine -mounted ARB, it's going to melt
itself eventually. And so replace that with one
of our compressors down the road. You'll get
more airflow, 50 % less air inflation time, and
it's all automated. So it's kind of like a stepping
stone ecosystem where you can start with one
thing, and then as time goes on, upgrade your
other components as you go. do it all at once,
you know, whatever you like to do. Um, and so
we try and I try and make things universal as
well as, um, modular, um, our two things that
are design elements. When you look at all of
our products, um, something that we do. So, yeah.
So, uh, you remember back, this would be back
before you started Morphlate. Everyone was converting
their AC compressors into air compressors. Do
you remember that? Oh yeah. Yep. How much, because
I'm thinking about doing something like that,
but how much better is an electric pump CFM compared
to the engine -mounted AC compressors? Yeah,
good question. So a belt -driven engine -mounted
compressor pushes about 12, 12 .5 CFM, which
is pretty good. It beats our 10 .6 compressors.
Our 10 .6 are 10 .6 CFM. So the thing to think
about, though. is that your four tires are bottlenecked
at your valve stems. The valve stems are going
to be the smallest part of an air system on tires,
off -road tires at least. So those valve stems,
there's a Schrader valve. So it's a tiny little
valve that sits inside your valve stem. What
actuates that valve is a spring -loaded pin.
that goes through the orifice of the valve so
that orifice is only about 1 16th of an inch
inner inside diameter with a pin going down the
center of it so like you're looking at less than
1 16th of an inch of an air orifice to get air
through that limits your airflow to about 2 cfm
per tire It's a little less at lower pressures,
a little higher at higher pressures. So around
30, 20 to 30 PSI, which is where a lot of off
-road tires sit at, you're looking at about 2
CFM. So really your max capacity of inflating
four tires at a time is about 8 CFM. Again, a
little more higher pressures, a little less at
lower pressures. So the other thing to think
about is that compressors. As the working pressure
increases, your airflow decreases. So our 10
-6 compressor, I should just pull this up real
quick because I'm giving you guys the accurate
information, the data, because I'm a fun data
nerd. I love numbers and analysis. And then along
with that Schrader valve, most chucks only open
it like 50%. so that's even less yep i mean if
you like apex has their high flow chuck which
opens it like i think it's like 89 90 up to nine
depending on the schrader valve they'll do up
to like 98 i think yep i think because with their
rpv i think it's 98 open um yeah but yeah so
even then you're getting less airflow through
there than what the schrader valve potentially
could be doing anyway. Yeah, for sure. And, um,
there's a couple of great videos. Apex has done
a couple of good videos about valve core engagement.
Um, we did some really good ones. They are in
our, um, story highlights on our Instagram. So
if you scroll right, go to our Instagram, look
right above our, uh, wall or our post wall, um,
are the highlight sections. Um, there's a section
with technique. I think it's called technical
data. Um, And in that is videos of how well our
air chucks engage valve cores compared to every
other air chuck on the market. And I think our
air chucks beat Apex's air chucks on valve core
engagement, which is pretty cool. We actually
designed our air chucks. I went down a really
deep rabbit hole one time on air chucks. Air
chucks are notoriously really, really shitty
in this world. I'm amazed as to how bad they
are. for something that's so basic of an air
valve opener. And so I went down a deep dive
to improve, make the best air chuck that I could
possibly find. And that was the ones we use today.
And we specifically came to that and realized
that we needed to make an air chuck ourselves
because of Apex's rapid valves, the RPVs, because
they are a very short valve step. They're slightly
shorter than what a valve stem should be. They
should be a half an inch of threads and a neck
in order to get air chucks to engage. And Apex
is like 0 .45 of an inch long, which means they're
really short. And a lot of air chucks have a
lot of difficulties engaging onto RPVs. And so
we specifically went to the drawing board and
designed our own air chucks so that we could
make something. that engaged and got full engagement
to an rpv which is a lot of fun um that's i might
have to look at yours because if yours are beating
there i use rp we use rpvs both um yeah so if
yours are beating them i might be interested
yeah go see if you can find it see if you can
find here i'll see if i can pull it up real quick
uh instagram yeah i think like both of you guys
make amazing stuff yeah i i the rpv is really
what drew me to apex if you came out with a valve
stem let me know that'd be really uh funny you
mentioned that i don't know if we're going to
come out with a valve stem per se but um we are
starting to work with um colby valves to create
our own valve stem replacement um so i've thought
about coming out with something similar to an
rpv but um apex has a valve stem um and then
power tank has their monster valves right and
both of them make an awesome product and i'm
really not in business not here in this industry
to copy products and rip stuff off if a company
makes a good product and i'm like i don't really
have any ideas to make it better or to make it
different have a different feature to it or something
um Then I'm going to let that company make that
product. I'm going to support them. So that RPV,
awesome product. The only downside is that it's
a little longer. And so if you do a lot of rock
crawling, you have a higher potential to shear
it off. Especially since they're not flexible.
Exactly, right? I'm definitely, anybody who does
off -roading, in my opinion, you should always
have rubber valve stems. um just because it's
gonna be a matter of time before you rip one
out um and rubber will take that abuse a little
bit better um but other other than that the rpvs
are fantastic the downside to monster valves
is that it's only the 3 8 diameter valve you
don't have a two -in -one combo for inflation
as a regular valve stem the way rpv does so the
rpv is let air out very quick But there's still
a basic regular Schrader valve to let air in,
which means they're still on the input side.
They are limited to about 2 CFM. So there's that.
But if you look at that Instagram, I put the
Instagram post down in the chat. You can pull
that up and take a look at it later if you're
interested in how our air chucks compare to the
Apex's air chucks. Okay. yeah i uh i bought their
high when they first came out with the high flow
and i had nothing but problems i still have issues
oh no so yeah um they the other thing that they
do is that they're a big thing with air chucks
in my opinion that's a really bad thing to put
in air chucks is um default engaged teeth that
grab onto your valve stems um anytime you have
a default engaged teeth that means that inevitably
at some point you're going to be rubbing those
teeth along your valve stem threads while you're
putting on and taking off the air chuck which
means there's planned obsolescence you're either
wearing down the teeth or you're going to be
wearing down your valve stem threads and it's
typically going to be the valve stem threads
because a lot of times the teeth in air chucks
are going to be made out of tool steel which
is a lot more hard of a material than brass or
aluminum which is what your valve stem threads
are typically made out of so by wearing out your
valve stem threads you're gonna be end up replacing
those rpvs you're gonna replace your valve stems
on your vehicle and if you have tpms sensors
that's a 70 to 70 to 80 replacement um because
you have to reprogram new tpms when you put them
in as well so um one of the big things i wanted
when i when i went down originally started the
four tire hose kits back in 2016, 17, when I
was trying to put these together, um, was I wanted
default disengaged teeth so that there was no
planned ops lessons. We're not ripping up people's
valve stems. Um, and, uh, that's one of the things
that we continue to this day with our proprietary
air chucks are more fleet air chucks now with
the locking collars. So, yeah, I love that. That's
way better. all right you got me convinced i'm
buying some air chucks they're awesome man they're
full engagement of a valve core on pretty much
100 i don't think you can get a valve core to
open any further than our air chucks do um and
default disengaged teeth um the locking collar
uh actuates the teeth in the direction you're
pushing on the air chuck or pulling it off which
is opposite of a lot of air couplers a lot of
air couplers you're trying to push the two fittings
together while pulling a collar backwards. So
it's two different actions trying to do this.
The other really cool thing about our air chucks
is if you look really closely at the teeth from
the profile view of the air chuck, you'll see
that the teeth are offset from each other. They're
at different planes of elevation. Those offset
teeth are the exact thread. pit not the thread
pitch but yeah the thread pitch how many inches
how many threads per inch um a valve stem thread
is on the exterior of your valve stems so our
teeth are perfectly designed to engage in the
valleys of your valve stem threads um so that
you don't accidentally get a tooth binding up
on the peaks of your valve stem threads and destroying
your threads so another little small feature
that we never really talk about people and it's
too small a feature to really notice but if you
have some of our air chucks you can kind of turn
them to the side so you can see where the teeth
go into the air chuck body and then rotate the
air chuck and you'll see that offset levels of
the teeth that offset level is specifically designed
so that the teeth go into the valleys of the
threads all three teeth at the same time so got
your attention but yeah i guess uh real quick
because i just found out my mom's on her way
um i got one more i got one more question okay
and now i forgot it sidetrack on the air trucks
yeah no um yeah man but your your air trucks
are incredible if i remember that question i'll
text you and ask you because now it's going to
bug me for sure um Yeah. I was going to try and
get into radio stuff, but we really, I knew you
could talk, but you had so much knowledge for
us. Once you start getting me going on engineering
stuff and physics and R and D stuff that we've
already done and released, dude, I can go forever.
I love, I love the little details. I love. perfecting
something right looking at something and constantly
trying to figure out how to make it better how
to do it better um how to make it better for
customers how to make it longer lasting etc so
um i'm always nerding out and always re -evaluating
all of our products um such as our side valves
like our side valves and our couplers right now
are a great example um we started with a quarter
inch industrial couplers and then we moved to
um a steel universal coupler and the main reason
for going to that universal coupler was to get
the push to connect feature of it um industrial
couplers you have to pull that collar back like
we talked about while you're putting the two
fittings together universal you can just push
the two fittings together um and so then we went
to all aluminum couplers again to help with heat
dissipation on our couplers and the heat spots
that people are using and touching and now we
are just now that's one of the things we are
getting ready to launch at the same time as our
hose kits the new hose kits is silicone injected
couplers so the collars the locking collars on
our couplers are all going to start coming out
with silicone for heat insulation so now You
don't have to worry about getting your hand burnt
or wearing gloves or getting your t -shirt in
order to disconnect any of our couplers anymore.
We already made that move on our slide valves
about six months ago. And now we're currently,
we had to go through and make new molds for all
of our couplers because we're also going to be
launching Nitto couplers, which is something
I have right here in front of me. So these couplers
are that fitting that comes on the Nappa MaxiTrack
compressor. um or um any of the just white labeled
compressors that people are not putting their
own spec call outs on so it's called a nitto
q japanese nitto q fitting it's a standard fitting
in asia and australian markets but in the united
states this fitting doesn't exist you cannot
get these fittings in the united states it's
really fucking annoying um and so i finally got
done with struggling trying to find these fittings
and i'm making them myself and we're going to
be supplying them in the united states But we
had to make a push -to -connect coupler to go
with them. And then we put off that project because
we started doing silicone injection on all the
collars. So those are all coming in here end
of October, beginning of November with the new
hose kits. So we'll have all those Nitto Q fittings
available for people if they want to have a direct
adapter for their white -labeled compressors
out there. Anything that's using that Nitto fitting.
And then all of our couplers and slide valves
are all now going to be silicone injected sleeves,
which helps with heat insulation. People don't
get burned anymore. Yep. Yeah, my wife has a
nice, beautiful tattoo on one of her arms where
she bumped up against my Viar compressor. Yeah,
geez. Yep. So things get hot. Yeah, they do.
Yeah. But. I think that is everything. Yeah.
It's just, it's always fun to talk to you either
online or in person. Well, I guess this is still
online, but either way, it's always fun talking
to you. So it was good having you on man. And
we'll catch you guys later. See you later. Record.
One, two, three, four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
Nine. Ten. All right. Now, I probably should
pull up the intro so I don't make it all messed
up again. So usually on Wednesdays, I have some
of this pulled up already. All right. Stupid
RSS. I wanted to sign in, not sign up. Welcome
to Botches Off -Road. Join us as we talk about
everything from gear reviews to trail stories,
tank camping to rock landing, and all things
to do with the outdoors. All right, today, I'd
say it's special, but you hear from Tyler every
week, or you should be. If not, go listen to
Snail Trail. Yep. It's not worth it. Don't do
it. Oh, it's totally worth it. We got Tyler from
Morphlate over here. He's going to be answering
some of our inflation deflation questions. Probably
radios too, because we don't have Gavin or Jimmy
to stop us. We're going to go wild. So yeah,
I've been seeing a lot of people say that the
all top compressor or the, what's that one that
Gavin bought that I hate? Thor. Thor's lightning.
Yep. But they're the same as your Morphlate compressor.
I know that's not true, but we need you to need
you to set the story straight here. Yeah. Um,
so God, where do we begin? The, the all top is
actually made at a different factory. Um, I know
what factory it is. Um, I, the, the interesting
thing about the all top is that the, uh learning
algorithm that drives our automatic inflation
and deflation in the psi pro compressor as well
as our air hubs that algorithm um i had a direct
hand in developing and figuring out you know
how often do the pressure checks whether it needs
to keep going or not how to figure out the airflow
of whatever air system it's using so you can
use uh shop air a power tank a twin arb a more
flat and all top at a viair a harbor freight
cigarette lighter compressor it doesn't care
what air source you use it kind of learns as
it goes so i had a direct hand in building that
algorithm and and getting it nailed down to work
appropriately and then the algorithm is getting
patented so that learning algorithm is getting
patented in China as well as in the United States.
And so the all top compressor is made at a different
factory and they reverse engineered the algorithm,
quote unquote. And I haven't got my hands on
one of their PSI Pro compressors, quote unquote,
to see if they really nailed the algorithm or
how it actually works because. as far as i know
we're the first ones to develop that learning
algorithm there's a couple other ways to do automatic
inflation and from i like to call brute force
hacking so you can use solenoids to open and
close solenoids very rapidly essentially once
every half second and every time the solenoid
closes a pressure sensor takes a reading of the
pressure in the system And if you're there at
your target pressure, it stops. It doesn't reopen
the solenoid. If it is not there yet, then it
reopens the solenoid for half a second. Let's
air in, close the solenoid, does another pressure
check. So it does that very rapidly for a very
long time. And the downside to that is it's really
noisy because solenoids opening and closing every
half a second for the length of your air uptime
is very noisy. airflow time, time that the air
is going into the tires is only half of what
it could be. So your overall time doubles. So
that's one way to do it. The other way to do
it is to limit the valve in which the airflow
goes through so that the valve bottlenecks your
whole system so that it is the lowest airflow
possible. That way you can run a mathematical
formula off of that known airflow. Which is really,
really slow. That's actually how the ARB links
system works. And so it just, it takes a really
long time. I mean, you're looking at 45 minutes,
40 to 45 minutes to inflate and deflate. And
by limiting that valve, you're also creating
an intentional bottleneck in your air system,
which means that. the compressor, if it puts
out way more airflow than that bottleneck, you're
just backlogging your compressor with pressure
and creating a higher working pressure on the
compressor, which generates a lot more heat,
makes gaskets and seals fail, pulls more power
from the motors, which puts stress on your wiring
and all your electrical components on that circuit.
So those are the two ways that inflation and
automatic inflation has been done. historically
and then we created that learning algorithm or
we helped create that learning algorithm um so
i don't know exactly how altop is doing it i
don't know exactly what algorithm they're using
um but they figured it out and um they are making
a a better priced compressor a better price point
compressor um but as far as i know they're still
using the old gen 1 components so When we first
brought compressors to the market for Morphlate,
they were pretty much identical to the Nappa
MaxiTrack, the very first version of Nappa MaxiTrack
compressor. They're made at the exact same factory.
And I'm honestly not sure who got to market first,
us or Nappa. But what happened was that compressor
was a white labeled model. So the factory owns
the design for it. And it had no pressure cutoff
switches. It had the thermal cutoff sensor was
kind of iffy in it. It had relays instead of
a board that helps control everything. And so
what a lot of people ended up doing was they
bought the Nappa compressor and changed a bunch
of stuff on it. So they added the pressure cutoff
switches and you have the Nappa MaxiTrack Facebook
pages that come out for modifying those compressors.
Dirt Lifestyle Nate. did an awesome video on
modding some of those compressors. And so what
I did was when we both released that compressor,
Napa, obviously a much bigger company, they bought
way, way more than I did. So we ran out of stock
really quickly while they maintained the stock.
So they kind of got credit for being first to
market, quote unquote, with that design, that
white labeled compressor. I realized as soon
as we got the compressors that. They were decent,
but there was a lot of upgrades that could be
done to make them way better, including all those
mods that people were doing to the Nappa MaxiTrack
compressors. So I went back to the drawing board
and I worked with the engineering team at the
factory to implement a bunch of those changes.
So the pressure cutoff switches, and we did an
80 -120 instead of what is standard in a lot
of compressors. 90 to 100 on and 150 off and
so we decided that you know we're really focusing
on the off -road space we want to make a product
that works awesome for off -roading so we limited
the pressure cutoff switch to turn off the compressor
at 125 so that people are not inadvertently hooking
up their compressors to their ARB lockers and
immediately blowing out the seals in their lockers
Which has always kind of fascinated me because
that's what ARB sets their compressors to, 150
cutoff. And they recommend running that straight
into the locker solenoids for their lockers,
which blows seals. Lockers are low pressure actuation
things. So you don't want to hit them with more
than really like 100 PSI. You're going more than
100 PSI, you're risking blowing seals in your
lockers. So we wanted to limit it pretty lower,
but we wanted to also be able to do RV tires,
which is 110 PSI. So we picked 125 as our cutoff.
We added in a solid state board rather than a
series of relays and then re -released that compressor.
And that was our quote unquote, our gen one compressor.
We did that one for about a year, year and a
half before I started realizing that. It's a
good compressor, but it gets hot. It generates
a ton of airflow. So the name of the game with
any compressor that is a piston -driven compressor,
screw compressors are a little bit different,
but piston -driven compressors, kind of like
your vehicle, generate a lot of heat because
you're compressing air and that generates heat,
just a lot of heat. If you think about it, a
diesel engine is able to ignite. fuel without
any spark, any flame source at all because they're
just compressing. That's how hot air gets under
extreme compression. So with compressors, they
generate a lot of heat and the name of the game
is keeping them cool. The cooler you can keep
a compressor, the longer it's going to last,
the more efficient it's going to run, the longer
duty cycles you can run it on, the more vehicles
you can air up, the more tires you can air up,
etc. So you can just use it for way more uses.
the more you can improve the heat dissipation
of the compressors. So we realized that about
a year, year and a half into this compressor
venture. And so I started figuring, you know,
dissecting the entire compressor and seeing what
components we could make out of different materials
in the compressors in order to have really good
heat dissipation, but also keeping prices reasonable.
So like titanium. awesome heat dissipation material
but it's super fucking expensive so you can't
you can't make compressors out of titanium so
we wanted to use something else we wanted to
stick with aluminum aluminum dissipates heat
great it's two and a half three times something
like that better than steel on heat dissipation
being able to draw heat away and dissipate it
in open air and so we did a bunch of different
things to the internals of the compressors in
order to help manage and mitigate heat so the
first thing that we did was um if you look at
i'm showing you guys here on the camera this
is a heat sink off of one of the gen 1 compressors
yeah you guys can't tell this very well but this
is actually a plastic heat sink so if you think
it would work It doesn't work at all. Plastic
insulates. It does not sink heat off. So if you
look at our current heat sink, I don't know if
I can do this side by side and hold the microphone.
So you see how the plastic one has a lot more
fins on it than the aluminum one? The aluminum
one we designed and essentially... From everything
that I've been able to research and compressors
I've been able to buy that look like our compressors,
if somebody is running this heat sink with a
bunch of extra fins on it, chances are it's a
plastic heat sink on those compressors out in
the market right now. It's that Gen 1 white labeled
compressor that the factory still sells to anybody
that asks. You can call up the factory and say,
hey. I want to make some compressors. I want
a compressor. I just want it to be purple and
have my logo on it. And that's white labeling,
right? So they own the product and then they
will put whatever color and logo that you want
on it and sell it to you. And that's the version
that this comes with is a plastic ABS heatsink,
which just insulates your cylinders, retains
heat, and slowly cooks your compressor to death,
really. But one of the interesting things about
plastic heat sinks is that they don't really
get hot because they're insulating your cylinders.
And so a lot of people will do temperature checks
on these heat sinks from the compressors and
be like, the compressors barely don't really
run hot. You can put it back in the bag because
the heat sinks and the components of the compressor
are not hot to the touch. they're not going to
melt the bag. So they think that the compressor
then is running very cool. And in actuality,
what's happening is it's just insulating and
cooking your compressor's internals rather than
letting that heat get to the exterior of the
compressor and dissipate. So check your compressors.
If you have one of these heat sinks with a ton
of fins on it compared to one of these guys,
chances are it's probably a plastic heat sink.
So you don't want plastic heat sinks on things
that get hot. So that was the first big thing
we noticed. I was like, those are absolutely
useless. You just can't run a compressor with
plastic heat sinks. So the name of the game is
keeping them cool and letting them dissipate
heat. So the other next thing that we noticed
on the heat sink itself, if you look, let's see
if I can do this with one hand. if you look on
this side i'm going to show you guys on the camera
that i'll have to make sure to get pictures from
you so we can put them in the show notes oh cool
yeah so this heat sink this is the the metal
cylinder and there is the the cylinder of the
compressor you have a piston that goes up and
down in here um it's typically oriented this
way when it's running yep but That piston goes
up and down the same way an engine piston does,
and it creates air pressure through a series
of open and input and output valves. So this
is kind of like the side view, right? And if
you look at the heat sink, it's only contacting
that cylinder in four spots. 12, 6, 3, and 9,
right? Yep, yep. So not only is it plastic, it's
retaining heat, but you have a bunch of these
air gaps in the corners here. where it's also
retaining heat in there. The heat is not really
going to the heat sink and dissipating to open
air. So we completely redesigned the heat sink
as well. Oh, that's much better. To be a perfect
fit on the cylinder here. So you have a 360 degree
contact of the cylinder to the heat sink. So
that was the next big change we did to help with
heat dissipation. And the cylinder here is aluminum.
You guys can't tell in the video there, but it
is very lightweight compared to this mild steel,
carbon steel one. So having the aluminum cylinder
as opposed to the carbon steel, you get two and
a half, three times more better heat dissipation
than the carbon steel one. So having the aluminum
cylinder. um combined with an aluminum heat sink
that has proper contact with the cylinder you're
just able to help get that heat out of the compressor
and dissipate it to open air way better than
anything else out there that has any one of these
three components set up this way a carbon steel
cylinder a heat sink that only contacts in four
spots or a plastic heat sink so That was the
big thing we did on the internals to help with
heat dissipation. We also changed the material
of the piston rings that seal the piston to the
internal of the cylinder so that the material
is a much better wear resistance, abrasion resistance,
and heat resistance. In essence, so it's just
going to last you a lot longer before that piston
ring ever looks at failing. And so far, ever
since we did that, we have not ever had a single
piston ring fail, which has been... pretty cool
to see that that that design change worked um
so along with those that's kind of the big internal
stuff um the external stuff which you can tell
right away when looking at our compressors compared
to everybody else's um we have a stainless steel
hose output hose on our compressor um we did
that for a couple of reasons um one Every other
compressor comes with pretty much a black rubber
hose, and it's pretty much a pure rubber hose.
So what happens to rubber over time? Dry ruts.
Yeah, it breaks down. It gets hard. It hardens.
It does not do well with a lot of heat cycles
going through it. It's also very susceptible
to UV degradation. Yep. And so over time, as
those black rubber hoses kind of start disintegrating,
degrading, getting really stiff and hard, they're
just going to start cracking and failing on you,
especially when they start getting stiff or hard
disintegrating. And then you're kind of coiling
them in these tight little packs to get back
into the compressor bag and then get thrown around
in the back of an off -road vehicle. Those hoses,
we had... After about two years, we started seeing
failures in those black rubber hoses. So that
was number one. We wanted to increase the durability
and the lifespan of these output hoses for people.
Number two is that stainless steel hose acts
as another heat sink to the compressor. So in
between the two cylinders of the compressor,
there's a... aluminum manifold that goes between
them that hides underneath the black cover with
the user controls and the control board. That
stainless steel hose is the outlet of that manifold.
So the aluminum manifold is now drawing heat
off of the heat sinks as well. And then the stainless
steel hose is drawing heat off of that aluminum
manifold. That stainless steel hose drops 100
degrees Fahrenheit from the manifold. to the
coupler and so there's a couple of things going
on that for the user when that happens one is
you're getting really good heat dissipation off
of the compressor so better heat dissipation
longer lasting compressor number two is that
coupler when you go to disconnect it after airing
up your vehicle is not going to be quite as hot
as every other coupler on the market that ends
up right next to or on attached directly to a
compressor. So compressors can output upwards
of 200 to 250 degree temperatures. A twin ARB
in an engine bade definitely hits that 250 degree
temperature mark. Other ones that are more open
air, not in an engine bay, they'll average around
200 to 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Our couplers on
that output of the hose don't really ever get
above 150. So 150 ends up being pretty much the
max. And they typically run around 120 to 150,
which is still hot. You don't want to touch that
directly with your hands. But it's way better
than having a 250 degree temperature coupler
that you're having to touch through gloves or
with your shirt or something else. So that stainless
steel hose. does actually quite a bit for the
compressor as a heat sink and the user as your
usability and then the last feature we added
to the gen 2 compressors was our purge valve
so we have a manual purge purge valve on the
back side of all of our compressors what that
does for you the reason why we originally put
it in and installed it was so that we could release
the pressure from the compressor so that you're
not storing the compressor with 125 psi internally
to the compressor. If you do that, you end up
putting a lot of stress, 125 pounds per square
inch on your piston rings, on your valves, on
your seals, any sealant and thread, whatever's
in the compressor all the way out to your coupler.
So being able to purge that when you're done,
that 125 PSI does go a long way to helping a
compressor last longer as well. One thing we
didn't realize. that it does that we quickly
figured out because we do a lot of off -roading
here at higher elevations in California. So we
can go anywhere from 6 ,000 to about 8 ,000 feet,
8 ,500 at the very top end in the Sierras here.
And we realized that the purge valve allows us
to calibrate all of our digital sensors and the
digital gauges into all of our compressors. So
if you can calibrate your compressor and your
digital gauges, your digital sensors to atmospheric
pressure, that gets you to be able to put precise
and accurate pressures into your tires according
to whatever you're looking to do. We never really
marketed that, but it was just kind of like one
of those things like, oh, sweet. That's awesome.
We can do that. And then. About a year and a
half, almost two years after we were running
the Gen 2 compressor, which has all those upgrades
we just talked about, some of our competitors
started marketing that they're the first ones
to do a digital calibration for elevation to
their compressors. And I was like... um we've
been doing that for like a year and a half two
years before you guys started implementing those
so we just haven't really been marketing it um
so we were able to kind of call them on it and
they're they're still they're still going with
their marketing so um but yeah those are the
main differences of the compressors it was unfortunate
that when we went through kind of the redesign
on the internals we didn't take the time to redesign
the entire compressor because that is our biggest,
I don't want to say downfall. It's our biggest
struggle point. It looks to ever the average
consumer, like we have the same compressor as
everybody else on the market. And really when
you start digging into it, we don't, we've done
a lot of upgrades on the internals. We have contracts
from the factories that state that they won't
make. our our spec sheet for other companies
and so far they've held held true to it you do
see some of the features showing up on other
compressors in the market um some compressors
have picked up the aluminum heat sinks i haven't
taken them apart to see if they're properly shaped
to the cylinder yet i have oh yeah we built we
built an all -top um it has the same you know
it's got the metal manifold like that Okay. It
does not go all the way around the cylinder like
that. Yeah. It's only got the four contact points.
Yep. The big thing I noticed when I was taking
apart that all top, and you didn't touch on this,
they've got these tiny little reeds that are
the valves. And every single one of those little
reeds was bending under normal operating system.
I plumbed mine into a tank, but before I plumbed
it into a tank, they were already bending, so
we had to flip them over to re -strengthen them.
But the all -top, we had three of them fail that
we built. All three of them were kicking out
the screws that hold those valves on. It would
kick them out and send them through the piston.
Oh, geez. Yeah. Wow. And that goes to quality
control, right? Everybody should know that in
dealing with China, their number one priority
is just increasing their bottom line profit as
much as possible. So if they can find ways to
cut corners on quality, they will. if you don't
have it specifically and explicitly marked out
in your spec sheet as to what you want them building
and how you want them building it um they will
totally skip the corner if they can um and so
like having a torque value for those screws or
having a call out to use a thread sealant of
some sort on those screws is something that we
had to do because We had one of our factories
before. Mess with those and we had the same issue.
So the quality control is another thing that
you really, really have to do in manufacturing.
The Chinese manufacturers and factories, they
will follow whatever you want, but you have to
be very explicit about what you want. And so
we've had to get our factory to set up a full
separate quality control process for our compressors
and our specs than what they do for everybody
else. We have our own quality control line at
the factory that we pay a little bit more for.
But when we do that, it comes down to we don't
have those simple little failures like having
the reed valve screws fall out and chew up your
cylinders. And we also not only that, but we
also go through every single unit at our warehouse
in Sacramento, California, before shipping it
out to people. And so we'll catch tiny little
things like blemishes, scratches on the unit.
We'll catch a leaky coupler on the output hose.
We'll catch, you know, one of the downsides of
doing stainless steel braided hoses is the stainless
steel. a braid will come out in certain parts
and create little pokies so we catch those swap
the hoses out for people um so the be doing a
dual 100 quality control process has allowed
us to really stand behind the compressors and
start doing a lifetime warranty on all of our
compressors we found that doing all those upgrades
to the internals and really making the compressors
dissipate heat better than anything else um that
we weren't really getting warranties back anymore
with the gen 2 compressors it was pretty cool
our warranty rate is under half a percent um
so we were like you know what i want to put my
money where my mouth is and let's just put a
lifetime warranty on it so doing everything that
we do allows us to really stand behind everything
with confidence that when somebody buys something
from us, they shouldn't have issues with it.
It should last them a very, very long time. Is
it going to last forever? We're not sure yet.
We haven't been in business for 10, 15, 20 years
to be able to see how long these compressors
are really going to last. But the Gen 2 compressors,
we've been able to triple the duty cycle from
the Gen 1s. So the Gen 1s running four tires
at a time, you're looking at about 15 to 20 minutes
on and 10 to 15 minutes off. So roughly a 50
% duty cycle. And with how much air these compressors
put out, 15 to 20 minutes on doing four tires
at a time, that you're really looking at like
three to four vehicles you can get aired up before
you're hitting thermal cutoffs. Now... With our
Gen 2 upgrades, we can run these things 45 minutes.
Wow. Doing four tires at a time before they hit
a thermal cutoff. And the thermal cutoff is the
internal temperature around 230, 235 degree Fahrenheit.
That's when the thermal cutoff kicks in. So we've,
and we actually, when we were doing the duty
cycle tests, we just called the test because
we got to 45 minutes and it wasn't cutting off.
So we're like. who's going to try and run this
for 45 minutes straight airing up? I mean, you
can get, what is that? Eight, nine vehicles done
in 45 minutes, something like that. So we just
called the test at 45 minutes and called it good
there. But what we do every year is we love doing
events where we get to set up kind of inflation
and deflation stations. And so Jeepers Jamboree,
we're lucky enough to be right next to the Rubicon
up here in California. And we have good relationships
with all the organizations that run the Rubicon,
including Jeepers Jamboree. So at the end of
Jeepers Jamboree on Sunday, when everybody's
coming out of the trail, we go and set up inflation
stations in Tahoma, the Tahoma staging area.
And we air up. over 500 vehicles in a half a
day using eight compressors. That's crazy. So,
um, it's, it's just, it's, and every time we
go and do that event, I'm always sitting back
and wondering when we're going to have a compressor
fail doing 500 vehicles and they never do. We've
been using the same compressors, I think for
three years in a row now, um, to do. that event
plus more throughout the year. So it just goes
to show that when you really look and do the
research and build something that's specifically
designed to handle what you're trying to do,
you can make a pretty damn good product. And
as long as you do the quality controls on your
end to make sure that the customer gets what
you made and what you intended, it's a pretty
cool thing. Yeah, and now you've taken even farther.
You've got the hub, which I'm starting to see
clones of, by the way. Oh, yeah. Which I just
sent one to the chat there on Jitsi. I think
that's crazy because the hub is such a unique
piece already to then copy it and make it worse
and sell it. It's almost the same price, too.
Yeah. Yours is what, like $250 or something like
that? Yeah, $250. And the clones are right there
at the $249 .99 mark. Yeah. So there's a funny
story about that. I'm not going to name any brands.
I'll let the consumers and the listeners try
and figure out which ones they are. But when
we were the first ones to... really be working
on the air hub project with the factory um and
this is the same factory that makes the same
compressors for everybody else it's a really
cool factory they do a bunch of solar and technology
stuff as well as air compressors um and so they
were able to combine technologies which is something
that i've always been interested in And so we
immediately hit it off, me and the owner of the
factory, when we were trying to develop the PSI
Pro algorithm. And then our idea was to create
a deflation algorithm because deflation algorithms
have never existed. And that's not really something
that you can do really well other than by the
brute force methods. Right. And it's not just
as easy as reversing the inflation algorithm.
So we worked with him after we'd got the inflation
algorithm done and perfected. We'd worked with
him on the deflation algorithm as well to work
all of that into one unit. And then we were able
to tell him, hey, this unit's pretty good. It
needs to be done this way, though, in order to
survive off -roading atmospheres, off -roading
environments. It needs to be. No bigger than
this. Our outputs and inputs have to be oriented
in these configurations. You should make it out
of this material. And so we went through all
those steps with them. Went through two or three
different alpha tests of samples before we landed
on our air hub that we have today. Unfortunately,
once we landed on that air hub, we sent it to
production. And one of our competitors happened
to be visiting the factory while our air hub
was on production line. The owner and the engineering
team of the factory grabbed one of our air hubs
off of our production line, handed it to our
competitor. and said this is what we're making
for more fleet and this take this as an engineering
sample we can't make it for you but we own the
rights to the technology that drives what it
does um and so we have our own design with our
own spec sheet and everything they technically
own the technology um and so yeah they they said
here's what we can do we can build you your own
air hub but this one's more flights take it home
play around with it and test it see what it does
and then we can make one for you our competitor
immediately took that home and put it on instagram
while we were going through our teaser campaign
to launch the air hub like we were just about
to start the teaser campaign of something new
and big is coming um this thing that revolutionized
the off -road industry, how people view airing
up and airing down tires. But we hadn't given
any pictures of what it was, any idea of size
or what this thing was. And then all of a sudden
our competitor shows up with our air hub on Instagram
saying, look at, this is our, I almost called
it by its name, what they call it. This is our
air hub. um we designed this we came out with
it we're launching it pre -orders up now and
i was like are you fucking kidding me what the
hell and so i'm starting to look into this and
i got in touch with the factory i was like yo
why do they have one of our air hubs like this
is and they're they're saying that they that
this is theirs that they made it he goes no no
no no and he explained what happened during their
visit and i was like well that's not what they're
saying what they're telling everybody So somebody
is wrong here. And if you are going against our
contracts and selling our product to somebody
else, that's going to be a very big deal. And
I'm going to have to get lawyers involved and
all this other stuff. And he goes, no, no, no.
And he sent me the emails back and forth between
him and my competitor stating what had happened
and that it was stated this is an engineering
sample, blah, blah. And I was like. First off,
shame on you for giving him our product as an
engineering sample. But B, shame on them for
going against everything you said and trying
to state that it's their thing. They had a picture
of it on their website that they were collecting
pre -orders from. And so I had to get my lawyers
involved with them there. And that was even after
we had a design patent submitted in the United
States and processing. And so one of the big
issues with patent law is that you can't go after
somebody until the patent is confirmed, right?
It's been approved. So just because it's a processing
does not mean you get to go after somebody, which
is unfortunate because the processing can take
two to three years sometimes. And so we went
after them and sent the lawyers. We sent them
cease and desist letters. and said you guys need
to send that back to us you can't have it and
they didn't send it back to us what they ended
up doing to get around the cease and desist letters
was they built an aluminum box and put our air
hub in the box and then continued taking it out
to shows and events um and i have pictures of
it all too um so yeah it's it was it was just
one of those things where you start you start
looking at and paying close attention to what
companies are doing in the off -road industry.
And you start seeing which ones are actually
doing their research, actually doing the work
to make stuff and be a part of the off -road
community. And then you start seeing which ones
are just there to make a quick profit and move
on. And so, yeah, just all the listeners out
there, keep your eyes open and pay attention
to the specifics and details. yeah you're uh
that's crazy man just the fact that they can
just copy it like that and just do whatever with
it yep yeah and it was it was one of those things
where you know a couple years ago i had a another
company um asked to purchase more flight acquire
more flight and i was like i'm not ready to sell
out but i'm going to draw this out and see where
this goes um and their reasoning the way they
approached it was hey, you need to let us buy
you or you don't have any intellectual property,
intellectual protection. So no patents, no trademarks,
et cetera. So we're just going to come into your
market, take it over and kick you out anyways.
So let us buy you or else. And I kind of strung
them along for about six months. And then finally
came up with some excuse. Hey, this isn't fair
to you guys. I'm sorry. We just got to cut this.
But it taught me a lot that they were right.
I didn't have patents. I was being naive in thinking
that people would stick to, if they develop something,
then they would want to be pushing it and selling
it, not let's rip off other people's products
and go to market with it to try and kick them
out of the market and take over. I thought that
the off -road industry was a little bit better
than that. But there's definitely players in
the off -road industry that behave that way.
And I'm learning who those players are. So since
then, I've put a lot of effort into learning
patent law, trademark law, intellectual property
protections, and putting those things in place
in order to protect the future of this company,
all the employees, jobs. all to ultimately all
of our customers too because if we go out of
business because we lost our spot in the market
then customers don't get those forever warranties
anymore those lifetime warranties they don't
get the customer service they don't get to see
their money that they spend at more flight go
back into their trails nationwide um with our
trail donation programs so um i had to learn
that was that was a tough uh uh lesson to learn
but um two years into that one um i think we've
got a lot of really good things in place to really
protect um the future of the company and the
stuff that we do come out with design and r &d
and a release to the public so which you've got
new stuff coming that you should tease us or
no you shouldn't tease us you should just tell
us what it is we're getting ready um here i think
it's going to be about two to three weeks. It
really depends on the government shutdown right
now. Customs and imports are just getting extremely
backed up. They're running skeleton crews in
customs and CBP. So things are just taking a
really, really long time to get processed through
customs. So I'm hoping... I could wait and release
this if you want to just tell us what it is.
um maybe i'll tell you off air once we're done
recording but it is going to be new hose kits
i will drop that one i will tell you guys what
it is i'm not going to tell you exactly what
we're doing to them yet um okay but it's going
to be we're revamping all of our hose kits across
the board we found a new way to make hoses which
is pretty rad and works cool awesome for uh what
we do in the off -road space and the environments
we're in um with these four tire air hoses systems
yeah that's that's really exciting yeah because
you're because you use a different rubber than
most people do or at least a different material
i don't know it's exactly rubber yep um the the
two that i've seen that are really good are your
hoses are really good and then apex designs I
don't know if you know who they are. Yep. Their
hoses are really good as well. Yep. Yep. But
yours, theirs are a little different and you
got to cut them and make them fit to your size.
They're for way inflation. I'm eh, whatever.
But the rest of what you can do with their stuff
is cool. Yours is just a one -stop shop. Everything
works. it's set up you're like the apple of uh
air inflation yeah no it's definitely um we make
we we like to think of making an ecosystem of
air inflation stuff right and deflation and so
we don't we like to make it very modular so that
people if they don't have 600 bucks to spend
all at once you can just buy the hose kit and
start off with the four tire hose kit running
four tires off of any air compressor will make
your air compressor be happier it distributes
the airflow and makes it so that you're running
your air compressors efficiently you're not getting
backlogs of air pressure on your compressors
which helps them run cooler makes them last longer
you don't blow out gaskets and seals you don't
pull more power and melt wiring harnesses so
anytime you get the chance to run four times
it does a lot of really cool things for your
compressor And then once your compressor, if
it ever does finally die, if it doesn't, then
you can get an air hub. And the cool thing about
the air hub is because of the way the learning
algorithms work, they're universal. You can put
them on any air source and it makes any air source
into an automated air source. So you can take
your twin ARB and hook up our hoses with the
air hub. And now your twin ARB is a completely
automated ARB. And then in the future, if you
have an engine -mounted ARB, it's going to melt
itself eventually. And so replace that with one
of our compressors down the road. You'll get
more airflow, 50 % less air inflation time, and
it's all automated. So it's kind of like a stepping
stone ecosystem where you can start with one
thing, and then as time goes on, upgrade your
other components as you go. do it all at once,
you know, whatever you like to do. Um, and so
we try and I try and make things universal as
well as, um, modular, um, our two things that
are design elements. When you look at all of
our products, um, something that we do. So, yeah.
So, uh, you remember back, this would be back
before you started Morphlate. Everyone was converting
their AC compressors into air compressors. Do
you remember that? Oh yeah. Yep. How much, because
I'm thinking about doing something like that,
but how much better is an electric pump CFM compared
to the engine -mounted AC compressors? Yeah,
good question. So a belt -driven engine -mounted
compressor pushes about 12, 12 .5 CFM, which
is pretty good. It beats our 10 .6 compressors.
Our 10 .6 are 10 .6 CFM. So the thing to think
about, though. is that your four tires are bottlenecked
at your valve stems. The valve stems are going
to be the smallest part of an air system on tires,
off -road tires at least. So those valve stems,
there's a Schrader valve. So it's a tiny little
valve that sits inside your valve stem. What
actuates that valve is a spring -loaded pin.
that goes through the orifice of the valve so
that orifice is only about 1 16th of an inch
inner inside diameter with a pin going down the
center of it so like you're looking at less than
1 16th of an inch of an air orifice to get air
through that limits your airflow to about 2 cfm
per tire It's a little less at lower pressures,
a little higher at higher pressures. So around
30, 20 to 30 PSI, which is where a lot of off
-road tires sit at, you're looking at about 2
CFM. So really your max capacity of inflating
four tires at a time is about 8 CFM. Again, a
little more higher pressures, a little less at
lower pressures. So the other thing to think
about is that compressors. As the working pressure
increases, your airflow decreases. So our 10
-6 compressor, I should just pull this up real
quick so I'm giving you guys the accurate information,
the data, because I'm a fun data nerd. I love
numbers and analysis. And then along with that
Schrader valve, most chucks only open it like
50%. So that's even less. Yep. I mean, if you,
like, Apex has their high flow chuck, which opens
it, I think it's like 89, 90%. Yep. Up to, depending
on the Schrader valve, they'll do up to like
98, I think. Yep. I think, because with their
RPV, I think it's 98 % open. Yep. But yeah, so
even then, you're getting less airflow through
there than what the Schrader valve. potentially
could be doing anyway. Yeah, for sure. And, um,
there's a couple of great videos. Apex has done
a couple of good videos about valve core engagement.
Um, we did some really good ones. They are in
our, um, story highlights on our Instagram. So
if you scroll right, go to our Instagram, look
right above our, uh, wall or our post wall, um,
are the highlight sections. Um, there's a section
with technique. I think it's called technical
data. Um, And in that is videos of how well our
air chucks engage valve cores compared to every
other air chuck on the market. And I think our
air chucks beat Apex's air chucks on valve core
engagement, which is pretty cool. We actually
designed our air chucks. I went down a really
deep rabbit hole one time on air chucks. Air
chucks are notoriously really, really shitty
in this world. I'm amazed as to how bad they
are. for something that's so basic of an air
valve opener. And so I went down a deep dive
to improve, make the best air chuck that I could
possibly find. And that was the ones we use today.
And we specifically came to that and realized
that we needed to make an air chuck ourselves
because of Apex's rapid valves, the RPVs, because
they are a very short valve stem. They're slightly
shorter than what a valve stem should be. They
should be a half an inch of threads and a neck
in order to get air chucks to engage. And Apex
is like 0 .45 of an inch long, which means they're
really short. And a lot of air chucks have a
lot of difficulties engaging onto RPVs. And so
we specifically went to the drawing board and
designed our own air chucks so that we could
make something. that engaged and got full engagement
to an rpv which is a lot of fun um that's i might
have to look at yours because if yours are beating
there i use rp we use rpvs both um yeah so if
yours are beating them i might be interested
yeah go see if you can find it see if you can
find here i'll see if i can pull it up real quick
uh instagram yeah i think like both of you guys
make amazing stuff yeah i i the rpv is really
what drew me to apex if you came out with a valve
stem let me know that'd be really uh funny you
mentioned that i don't know if we're going to
come out with a valve stem per se but um we are
starting to work with um colby valves to create
our own valve stem replacement um so i've thought
about coming out with something similar to an
rpv but um apex has a valve stem um and then
power tank has their monster valves right and
both of them make an awesome product and i'm
really not in business not here in this industry
to copy products and rip stuff off if a company
makes a good product and i'm like i don't really
have any ideas to make it better or to make it
different have a different feature to it or something
um then I'm going to let that company make that
product. I'm going to support them. So that RPV,
awesome product. The only downside is that it's
a little longer. And so if you do a lot of rock
crawling, you have a higher potential to shear
it off. Especially since they're not flexible.
Exactly, right? I'm definitely, anybody who does
off -roading, in my opinion, you should always
have rubber valve stems. um just because it's
gonna be a matter of time before you rip one
out um and rubber will take that abuse a little
bit better um but other other than that the rpvs
are fantastic the downside to monster valves
is that it's only the 3 8 diameter valve you
don't have a 2 -in -1 combo for inflation as
a regular valve stem the way rpv does so the
rpv is let air out very quick But there's still
a basic regular Schrader valve to let air in,
which means they're still on the input side.
They are limited to about 2 CFM. So there's that.
But if you look at the Instagram, I put the Instagram
post down in the chat. You can pull that up and
take a look at it later if you're interested
in how our air trucks compare to the Apex's air
trucks. Okay. yeah i uh i bought their high when
they first came out with the high flow and i
had nothing but problems i still have issues
oh no so yeah um they the other thing that they
do is that they're a big thing with air chucks
in my opinion that's a really bad thing to put
in air chucks is um default engaged teeth that
grab onto your valve stems um anytime you have
a default engaged teeth that means that inevitably
at some point you're going to be rubbing those
teeth along your valve stem threads while you're
putting on and taking off the air chuck which
means there's planned obsolescence you're either
wearing down the teeth or you're going to be
wearing down your valve stem threads and it's
typically going to be the valve stem threads
because a lot of times the teeth in air chucks
are going to be made out of tool steel which
is a lot more hard of a material than brass or
aluminum which is what your valve stem threads
are typically made out of so by wearing out your
valve stem threads you're gonna be end up replacing
those rpvs you're gonna replace your valve stems
on your vehicle and if you have tpms sensors
that's a 70 to 70 to 80 dollar replacement um
because you have to reprogram new tpms when you
put them in as well so um one of the big things
i wanted when i when i went down originally started
the four tire hose kits back in 2016, 17, when
I was trying to put these together, um, was I
wanted default disengaged teeth so that there
was no planned ops lessons. We're not ripping
up people's valve stems. Um, and, uh, that's
one of the things that we continue to this day
with our proprietary air chucks are more fleet
air chucks now with the locking collars. So,
yeah, I love that. That's way better. All right,
you got me convinced I'm buying some air chucks.
They're awesome, man. They're full engagement
of a valve core on pretty much 100%. I don't
think you can get a valve core to open any further
than our air chucks do. And default disengaged
teeth. The locking collar actuates the teeth
in the direction you're pushing on the air chuck
or pulling it off, which is opposite of a lot
of air couplers. A lot of air couplers, you're
trying to... push the two fittings together while
pulling a collar backwards. So it's two different
actions trying to do this. The other really cool
thing about our air chucks is if you look really
closely at the teeth from the profile view of
the air chuck, you'll see that the teeth are
offset from each other. They're at different
planes of elevation. Those offset teeth are the
exact thread. pit not the thread pitch but yeah
the thread pitch how many inches how many threads
per inch um a valve stem thread is on the exterior
of your valve stems so our teeth are perfectly
designed to engage in the valleys of your valve
stem threads um so that you don't accidentally
get a tooth binding up on the peaks of your valve
stem threads and destroying your threads so another
little small feature that we never really talk
about people and it's too small a feature to
really notice but if you have some of our air
chucks you can kind of turn them to the side
so you can see where the teeth go into the air
chuck body and then rotate the air chuck and
you'll see that offset levels of the teeth that
offset level is specifically designed so that
the teeth go into the valleys of the threads
all three teeth at the same time so got your
attention but yeah i guess uh real quick because
i just found out my mom's on her way um i got
one more i got one more question okay and now
i forgot it sidetrack on the air trucks yeah
no um yeah man but your your air trucks are incredible
if i remember that question i'll text you and
ask you because now it's going to bug me for
sure um Yeah, I was going to try and get into
radio stuff, but we really. I knew you could
talk, but you had so much knowledge for us. Once
you start getting me going on engineering stuff
and physics and R &D stuff that we've already
done and released, dude, I can go forever. I
love I love the little details. I love. perfecting
something, right? Looking at something and constantly
trying to figure out how to make it better, how
to do it better, how to make it better for customers,
how to make it longer lasting, et cetera. So
I'm always nerding out and always reevaluating
all of our products, such as our side valves.
Like our side valves and our couplers right now
are a great example. We started with a quarter
inch industrial couplers, and then we moved to
um a steel universal coupler and the main reason
for going to that universal coupler was to get
the push to connect feature of it um industrial
couplers you have to pull that collar back like
we talked about while you're putting the two
fittings together universal you can just push
the two fittings together um and so then we went
to all aluminum couplers again to help with heat
dissipation on our couplers and the heat spots
that people are using and touching and now we
are just now that's one of the things we are
getting ready to launch at the same time as our
hose kits the new hose kits is silicone injected
couplers so the collars the locking collars on
our couplers are all going to start coming out
with silicone for heat insulation so now You
don't have to worry about getting your hand burnt
or wearing gloves or getting your t -shirt in
order to disconnect any of our couplers anymore.
We already made that move on our slide valves
about six months ago. And now we're currently,
we had to go through and make new molds for all
of our couplers because we're also going to be
launching Nitto couplers, which is something
I have right here in front of me. So these couplers
are that fitting that comes on the Nappa MaxiTrack
compressor. um or um any of the just white labeled
compressors that people are not putting their
own spec call outs on so it's called a nitto
q japanese nitto q fitting it's a standard fitting
in asia and australian markets but in the united
states this fitting doesn't exist you cannot
get these fittings in the united states it's
really fucking annoying um and so i finally got
done with struggling trying to find these fittings
and i'm making them myself and we're going to
be supplying them in the united states But we
had to make a push to connect coupler to go with
them. And then we put off that project because
we started doing silicone injection on all the
collars. So those are all coming in here end
of October, beginning of November with the new
hose kits. So we'll have all those Nitto Q fittings
available for people if they want to have a direct
adapter for their white labeled compressors out
there. Anything that's using that Nitto fitting.
And then all of our couplers and slide valves
are all now going to be silicone injected sleeves,
which helps with heat insulation. People don't
get burned anymore. Yep. Yeah, my wife has a
nice, beautiful tattoo on one of her arms where
she bumped up against my Viar compressor. Yeah,
geez. Yep. So things get hot. Yeah, they do.
Yeah. But. I think that is everything. Yeah.
It's just, it's always fun to talk to you either
online or in Bert. Well, I guess this is still
online, but either way, it's always fun talking
to you. So it was good having you on man. And
we'll catch you guys later. Later.