Is $400 a good deal on lp steel 120's

[laughintom]

Hey,

Just looking to find out if this is a deal I should jump on or not. My LDS has some used lp 120's in current hydro and vip with the manifold and bands for $400. These things are huge. How much weight could I drop from my belt diving one of these single as opposed to an AL 80? How ridiculous are these things going to be doubled up? By the way, I am 5'10" 250 lbs and square not round. I currently dive with 24 lbs in freshwater with my 7mm farmer john.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Tommy

 

[teknitroxdiver]

They'll be....very big. For the tank data, I'll use a PST LP120, as you didn't say what manufacturer. They're 29 inches long, an AL80 is 26 inches. These tanks weight 52# on land, so that's gonna be a total of at least 110# once you include valves, regs, and bands. They're -2# empty, so that'll be at least -8# including hardware. Full they're -7, that's at least -18# with hardware.

You should be able to drop at least 12# compared to the AL80....however, I notice you're diving wet. Wetsuits+steel doubles is NOT a good combination. After your wetsuit compresses at depth, if you have a failure of your wing, you will become a dirt dart that's 30 pounds negative.

If you want doubles, you'll want to stick to AL80s until you get a drysuit. Also, 240 cf of gas will either get you a bunch of dives (I could do 4 1/2 normal no-deco dives on double 120s...), or it will get you into trouble pretty fast. If you're not deco trained, you really don't need that much gas. Not only will the 80s be a LOT lighter, but will still give you the redundancy of the 120s and let you make 2 dives to a fill.

 

[Tom Winters]

How strong is your back? Twinned 120's pumped up high will give you 320 or so cubic feet of gas, but if you have any kind of trek into a cave area or you have an awkward boat ladder to climb up after the dive, especially with a couple of stage bottles, you better be in some good shape. Lots and lots of people found out the hard way that their backs were not up to the task.

 

[Bnscherm]

I like them as single tanks, youll have to play with weighting and trim as they are very differnet than an al80. Good price as well you could ebay the manifold and bands for a good chunk of it if you dont want them.