# Old RA5E6VA Ingersoll-Rand Questions



## Michael Fronczak (Jan 3, 2017)

Hello All,

My brother recently told me I could have the old Ingersoll-Rand RA5E6VA air compressor that's in his garage. It was used by our ex-brother-in-law for a couple of years, when he returned it the motor pulley (the small one) was busted. I did a bunch of looking online, the part has been discontinued and nobody has it in stock. After contacting I-R, they gave me to Devilbiss who then passed me to Porter-Cable, all with no luck.

After doing a lot of Google searching, I found a couple of people that subsituted a newer pulley that was supposedly "nearly" identical except just a tad smaller in diameter. This particular pulley was available, so I bought it and thought that was that.

I finally got the air compressor to my house and found that while the pulley fit the motor, it was designed for a serpentine-type belt. However, the other pulley on the machine is a v-belt type.

I once again went online and looked. The original belt calls for a 6J belt (Belt 6J 47.3 Eff [C-BT-224] for Power Tool | eReplacement Parts), and from the small pictures I can find it looks like the bigger pulley is also the serpentine type (though I don't want to decide anything based on a couple of pictures). I also found some articles about replacing the belt that talks about a belt tensioner, which the compressor I have definitely does not have.

So, I have no idea if I just can't get the right information because the compressor is obsolete, or if I have the right information but someone changed both pulleys at some point, from the original serpentine to v-belt. The bottom line is, I'd like to get this thing up and running and to do that, I need to buy a pulley - either a v-belt small one (I was planning on getting one from McMaster-Carr) or a serpentine big one, which appears to still be available. However, the v-belt one is like $9 and the serpentine is $65.

I guess my question is, is there any reason I can't just get a replacement v-belt pulley? I'm not sure what is stock and if it really makes a difference as long as they are sized and aligned properly. Thank you.


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