12 years ownership Bauer Mariner 200 K120.2 Block of 2010

[IyaDiver]

Aha...too bad you can't acces the HP Seat kit. This safety valve complete unit itself technically will last the 15 years pressure vessel reccomended life, the only wear-out item is that HP seat. I have 4 set of the HP seat kit ...

 

[IyaDiver]

NEXT............

Once in a while check the stud of the 2nd stage discharge valve, item 120.
If this one comes loose, it will get hammered by item-set 135 spring holder and becomes broken.
Without the stud item 120 pushing down on item-set 135 , that valve will leak air out into atmosphere from lost of copper washer item 125 and a corn nut item 130...which will drop off to the floor.

I have seen more than 5 friends K120 block had this stud broken.
Perhaps poor QC during assembly and it was not tight enough from factory. 10Nm torque is enough.

This banjo ( coupling N26751 ) at 2nd stage if compressor operated in the tropics, eventually will have its special rubber/seal section degraded and will leak. The same banjo is found on top of WS #1.
The rubber/seal is molded to the banjo so you need new banjo.

Don't worry, use a copper washer instead and it will work.
I used the one from 2nd stage discharge valve kit, item 145 two photos up.

On the subject of PMV service, you can service it and has to be serviced when time is up if you want its maximum pressure maintaining capability not drifting and stay good even when compressor been shut off.

I have replaced the piston #189 on my PMV at 2,372 Hours and 2 of the o-rings 187 and 188,
Need special tool to un-screw item 185, a double dot tool. I forgot the tool P/N.

======================


2nd Stage overheating is expensive and often that stage is the one getting the overheat damage first.
The earlier post photos I showed of a Mariner 200 overheating, that unit cost US$2,457.40 to repair all in in 2011, which also it gets the 2,000 hour service kit which is US$842 in itself component cost. Local Bauer distibutor does not want to take chances.

The 2nd stage cylinder head gone, froze from overheat and that was US$409. The Banjo gone too, was US$41.60. Well .... aluminum cylinder head vs steel banjo and discharge valve, the female thread at the cylinder head all galled = total loss.

2,000 hour service kit would be A + B + C

==========================



Okey dokey. That is all I have done on this 2010 Mariner 200 K120.2 with P41 System to service/replace/inspect list, covered & not covered in the user manual.

Have a safe air-fill and dives for everyone.......

 

[happy-diver]

Possibly due to the fact that I have been made an honorary Bauer service guy
by a real Bauer service guy that sells me the kits I think I pay 150AUD for one

I've also bought kits from others whom I tell that I'm an honorary service guy

You can also buy the bellville washers from many industial hardware suppliers

Belleville Washer Installation & Belleville Washer Uses

Learn about Belleville Washer installation, Belleville Washer uses, & much more in our Belleville Washer Guide.

americanbelleville.com

Amazing thread
I love you man!

 

[IyaDiver]

AUD$ 150 for which service kit ?
If a true A + B + C which is 500 + 1,000 + 2,000 HR kit combined, no way they will ever sell you genuine Bauer kit (3) at such low prices.

I been stuck but happy to buy Bauer genuine ones, which probably is made by other company.
However, the 3rd stage floating piston alone is NOT CHEAP at all .

 

[happy-diver]

This one chief

 

[IyaDiver]

Sweet !!!

 

[Daz996]

When one is thingking to buy a pre-owned Mariner K120.2 block, make sure get a 2007 or newer.
2006 and below , the oil injection at stage 3 is different. 2007 and up is cooler running because the oil injection for floating piston is at a more optimized location. This is a 5 BAR oiling system, not the 75BAR of the older K120 gen 1 block which its floating piston is smooth without any piston rings and was made of very fine honed steel, no oil filter. 5 BAR version uses aluminum piston with many rings and has oil filter View attachment 750382


Capitano and up is the Bauer model with proper pressurized 3rd stage oil injection for long life.
The smaller PE100/Junior and the like, has no pressurized oil injection at 3rd stage and so much higher operational RPM and is suitable for 2 divers weekend warrior and low hours use per year. Push that compressor hard = bye bye. No matter what brand the compressor is, 3rd stage without pressurized oil is a short lived compressor .....PERIOD.

Sorry, me no experience with 4 stages bigger Bauer.



SERVICE 500 HOURS, 1,000 HOURS and 2,000 HOURS.
It is in the parts catalog as A = 500 hours, B = 1,000 hours and C=2,000 hours.

I am attaching the Parts Catalog covering my compressor and the smaller Capitano.

If you do 250 hours (max 1 year) compressor oil change and using Bauer Synthetic or its BAUER-USA equivalent which used to be Chemlube 800, the supposedly 1,000 HOUR floating piston stage 3 will not get worn out even at my 4,000 hours.

Stage 3 floating piston at 1,300HR Dec 2013
View attachment 750397
The 2 o-rings which are 500 hours rated, yes, the smaller one will be damaged by 500+ hours.


View attachment 750399



2,372 HOURS 17th July 2017
View attachment 750400
Floating piston still like a virgin.


At 4,000 hours, last week.
View attachment 750413



Price feel ........US$500 for this floating piston

Bauer Mariner II 3rd Stage Piston Assembly NP-2210-0529A

This NP-2210-0529A 3rd stage piston assembly fits Bauer Mariner II Compressor part 078043

filtertechs.com

So I wasted money on oil 2.8 liters x 18 oil changes vs 6 oil changes if I follow 2 years max ( or 2,000 hours ) Bauer oil change reccomendation. I have ALL moving parts like a virgin and by 2,372 hours I have save US$1,000 too on floating piston. By 4,000 hours I saved US$2,000 on floating piston alone. I win hands down.


I did replace the 1st stage reed valve for fun sake. Its quieter if new.
Bauer Parts List, my version did not show hours life for it.
View attachment 750402


1st stage liner wall is like a virgin....awesome !!!
View attachment 750414


I followed all of Bauer's 500, 1,000 and 2,000 hour component life, except for some o-ring which is purely for oil seepage control and not of any air or oil pressure and the floating piston I do not follow Bauer 1,000 hour life. Me too lazy to change those o-ring because I need to remove the cylinder liner. All small intake & exhaust valves stage 2 and 3 are 1,000 hours service life and yes, do replace them per 1,000 hours if you can.


However, I cheated a bit.
1,300HR >>> 2,372 HR >>> 4,000 HOURS was the schedule and not truly per 1,000 hours LOL.


Any screw up or Murphy Law taking charge for the 12 years / 4,000 hours ownership ?
Sure, life is not perfect.
My staff in 2017 at approx 2,300 compressor hours, one of them forgot to remove the water condensate at 1st water separator in time.
Me in the tropics its humid like crazy, if one forgot to dump the water condensate at 1st WS unit per 10-15 minutes, this small WS can be overfilled with water-condensate very FAST !!

How do I know someone forgotten to dump the condensate in time ?
Well, I keep track of my filter weight brand new as when installed and after its done its service.
Per 49 to 52 hours of this 67224 filter service, its added weight is usually at best 200 to 220 ish grams.
These extra weight is water vapor at the 13X and whatever other nonsense our compressor produces.

View attachment 750407


So I cut open immediately the filter cartridge and DANG !!! 13X all wet at zone 1.
At even 53 hours, those 13X at zone 1 will be as white as the zone 2 13X.
If you can see a tiny bit wet ( off-white or mild brown ) 13X, say a first 2-3cm air entry path , you have miscalculated your filter life or something went wrong.
Normal used 50 hour filter vs screw-up filter... forgot to dump water at WS #1.
View attachment 750409


Well wet filter is not the sad part, I was fortunate there was no water hammer damage at stage 2 or 3.
But I got my 2nd stage liner cosmetically ruined due to this screw up.

Below is the 2nd stage condition per 1,300 and 2,372 hours. No surface damage, its just water stain.
Can't feel the stain at all, so me lucky mechanically.
View attachment 750411


Recently, last week at 4,000 hours
View attachment 750412



Today, this M200 K120-2 baby still looks good after 12 years.
View attachment 750415


WILL CONTINUE........................

I will later share what will go bad and no life hours placed on it/them parts and what happen to operator/s who push their filter life limit beyond proper calculation and not only poor wet air they get, but high $$ damage of the PMV will happen.

 

[Daz996]

Now we discuss the PMV or Back Pressure Valve some people call it.
View attachment 750611


This PMV is very important for proper drying of the air for the filter cartridge and for the proper use life of the media 13X, Activated Carbon and Hopcalite. In the end it is about air quality = safety.
What higher level of needs if not safety of the air we breath ?

It is not cheap too and it is fragile if you are not discipline.
US$374 today , depending on Euro xchange rate.

PRESSURE MAINTAINING VALVE (78538)

PRESSURE MAINTAINING VALVE (78538) hi pressure parts provide a variety of Breathing Air compressor to fit your needs bauer breathing air compressor Bauer kompressor spare parts %

www.hipressureparts.com

When one owns a compressor, one has to adhere to the filter media life based on the final water separator temperature or combo filter + WS housing. I am speaking of properly kept dry media, like how Bauer vacuum packed their filter cartridge using aluminum thick foil. Only metal is water vapor proof, plastic is not. For those who loves to re-pack their own filter media and buy 13X in plastic bottle, do dry them out before use or you will never achieve 13X molecular sieve 20% by weight water vapor capture capability.

This is my calculation on how a 3 stage Bauer 1st water separator and the final one ( or #2) capability in taking water vapor out of the compressed air.

View attachment 750616


The PMV as the name implies is a Pressure Maintaining Valve.
This is a pressure cheat device to assist Water Separator to squeeze water vapor as much as possible mechanically and not chemically like the filter media 13X molecular sieve. It is the cheapest air drier bang for the buck and no consumeables to spend.

It is simple physics.
This is water vapor at 100% humidity in cc/milliliters or grams per 1,000 liter of air at 45C.
Yep 65 ish milliliters or grams. Pure water is 1 gram per 1 milliliters or 1 KG per 1 Liter.
View attachment 750619

You can verify the above here :

Air - Maximum Moisture Carrying Capacity

Maximum water content in humid air vs. temperature.

www.engineeringtoolbox.com

Why 100% RH ?
Because by the time the compressed air is discharging from 1st stage, that is 7x the ATM pressure.
So the humidity is already 100%, even when you start at a drier RH % but at 1 ATM.
Just imagine a simple version : 7 liters of air at 1 ATM, got squeezed to 1 liter ( 7 BAR ), the water vapor becomes saturated 700% as it has 1/7 less space to hang out at. Lets loosely use 1 BAR is equal to 1 ATM, easier.

At 2nd stage, its about 49BAR the air and its water vapor get compressed...more squeeze.
Then before the air is delivered to 3rd stage, 1st Water Separator ( with the cooler pipe assist) is used to cool and drain out the water vapor as liquid water at an efficient pressure of 49 BAR by means of temperature drop and pressure drop. Pressure drop is when you open the WS drain valve at the bottom.

The cooler the air, the less water vapor it can hold. Oil vapor get pulled out too from the air stream at the Water Separator. Would be nice to call it Water+Oil Separator actually.


This already kinda DRY air with some oil trace is then compressed at final water separator (#2) at 150ish BAR. Here is the pressure cheat again, more pressure allows more squeeze to maximize water vapor turning into liquid water and be thrown away....yes, with the aid of cooler pipe too and pressure reduction. So mechanical and some physics too.

So the pressure increase and maintaining it for a PMV, is for better removal of water vapor in the air.
If we do not use a good water separator, we go $$ broke fast if drying air is using 13X molecular sieve only. I mean REAL FAST.

Now, what happen when we use a defective OPEN-STATE PMV which can't maintain 150 BAR / 2,175 PSI ?
Well, from low pressure to 2,000 PSI ish your filter media would be drying a much wetter air because
those total volumes between 0 - 2,000 PSI did not get full advantage of a proper working PMV squeezing the air constantly at 2,175 PSI / 150 BAR to maximize water separator function.

Let me use my P41 Filter Tower & Water Separator system to visualize, it is better and easier to understand than when using a P21/P Zero combo filter+WS housing.


Assume we just finished filling 1 tank. In a P41 system pictured below, there is a check-valve between item 2 (WS #2) to item 3 which is P41 tower. Because of a proper working PMV , when we empty the filler hose item 4, the PMV will stop releasing air when lower than 150BAR or 2,175 PSI. So P41 filter tower will forever be at 2,175 PSI once it has done 1 tank fill. Assume its check valve from WS #2 is working fine.

When we start the compressor for next air filling, from 0 PSI to 2,160 / 149 BAR, no new air is YET filling the P41 tower's filter media. So, the WS #1 ( Item 1 ) and WS #2 ( Item 2 ) can then benefit the pressure cheat the PMV is offering and both water separators will do its work to its maximum design efficiency.
WS #1 will work at 49 BAR and WS #2 will work at 149 BAR.

If we use air capacity, an 80CF cubic tank which is an 11 liters tank,
149 BAR is worth 149 x 11 = 1,639 liters of air.
80CF = 2,265 liters or equal to an 11L tank at 207 BAR.

So a defective open-state PMV, will wet out filter media very fast because pressure cheat can't happen effectively.


View attachment 750623


Here are the 13X molecular sieve drying media content in grams for Bauer filter cartridge, the one with CO remover Hopcalite
View attachment 750633



Let say your PMV is defective and in open-state. You fill up a truly empty tank of 80CF/11L size to
20 BAR/290 PSI , that is worth 220 liters of air. Your virgin filter media, the 13X will adsorb a lot of of water vapor because the tank itself is now the PMV.

220 liters is only 66 seconds from a 200LPM compressor.
Do you drain your water separators once per 66 seconds ?

Now, if the PMV is working and you are using a P41 system like mine set at 150 BAR, lets fill up a totally empty tank too. This is what will happen :
Compressor starting, pressure is building up fast, because the PMV is working and that means I only need to do maximum 2.5 liters of air to fill up WS #1 and WS #2 per 1 BAR increase of pressure, not the tank at all. 2,5 liters internal volume of 2 water separators is about right and on the caution side.
To get to 20 BAR, 2.5L x 20BAR = only 50 liters of air and none even enter the tank yet and the air can be dried at WS #1 and also WS #2.

Now lets remove calculation for vapor pressure yada yada and all the complex science .
We use super simple calculation for a compressor with failed open-state PMV.

Let use just 5 BAR / 72 PSI filling of an 80CF / 11 LTR tank and 45C is the final temperature at WS #2.
55 liters is what we need. At 45C this crazy wet 100% RH compressed air has 65 milliliters of water vapor per 1 ,000 liters of air. So we do calculation as : 55 / 1,000 x 65 milliliters = 3.58 grams or milliliters of water vapor. Is this 3.58 grams a lot for 13X inside a filter cartridge ? Hell yeah.

View attachment 750661


See how a LOT is a 3.58 grams of WATER vs a P21 filter cartridge 13X capacity, which is only able to get rid of 13 grams of water. As I indicated by my rough calculation table, mechanical water separators when working well ( with its PMV ) and cooling down by the aftercooler pipes, are the cheapest hardware set to remove up to 99.6% of total water vapor in the compressed air, kinda amazing.


=================

Now we see how when activated carbon and molecular sieve gets very wet , because operator either has a failed PMV or miscalculated filter life or want to save money where he/she should not.........

This is what happen to the PMV , corossion and leak and PMV can't hold pressure = TOTAL LOSS
View attachment 750667
Above is a goner...bye bye PMV. Yes, simple corrossion on seal sealing surface.



View attachment 750665



View attachment 750666



Why corrossion ?
Well activated carbon when saturated with water can be corrossive.
"Wet activated carbon tends to corrode mild steel, aluminum and some other metals. "

The Care, Handling & Disposal of Activated Carbon | WC&P

Learn about the care, handling, and applications of activated carbon. Discover its properties, storage tips, safety considerations & if necessary, disposal.

wcponline.com

Carbon and aluminum is also not galvanic-ly compatible.
Carbon also some are made using acid-base treatment.

How about 13X when super wet ?
Well its not too friendly too, sandy residue like powder.
These are set of used P41 67224 cartridges I kept for experiment sake.
Its 13X was still SUPER dry when removed from service between 49 to 52 hours.
Overtime it will absorb ambient water vapor and started to ooze those powder/sand like thingy.
Imagine this goes into the fine tight tolerance surfaces of the PMV internals
View attachment 750676

View attachment 750677



WILL CONTINUE ........................

Some very interesting reading, I run a mariner 250 and 320 I swear by doing 200hr oil changes, they have the secrus air moisture monitoring system and Im starting to consider repacking my filters due to cost

 

[happy-diver]

Dude!

Get packin

 

[IyaDiver]

Securus is a low cost version of dew-point sensor Bauer is using , without needing the exotic up to -80C dew point NIST traceable sensor. So the cost is added to the filter cartridge as there is extra dessicant bed acting like a dew point sensor. Also Securus will have lower 13X quantity overall.

I done some calculation in the past, if a busy dive center with 20-30 tanks a day fill and in the tropics at 30C ambient temp, Securus in the long run is $$ sucker due to the extra $$ Securus filter cartridge price compared to non Securus one. Going for a true dew point sensor is better and actual Dew Point in Celcius can be read, unlike Securus.


It is easy to bypass a Securus system, if such need arises.
Latest one from Bauer, the B Detection Plus is a true dew point sensor with CO sensor.


Actually those humidity plug using paper based indicator is good for its cheap price, as long as
one knows how to operate it properly and proper installation location. I have compared it to
a NIST traceable dew-point sensor, not bad at all to indicate time to change the filter cartridge.

================

If funds are sufficient, avoid buying a compressor with combo filter housing and water separator like P21/P Zero and P31. Its not so good for stop and go use as the filter cartridge is forever in a wet zone , which is the water separator section. Or if can be modified, add a final water separator before the P21/P31, like how a P41 or P61 are.