Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
A friend of mine gave me this old Scubapro MK3/108 reg.
It's probably from the mid to late 60's, thin yolk, 2 LP ports & one HP port.
The thing has quite a history. First of all it was never serviced once in it's entire lifetime.
The guy who gave it to me was primarily a freedive spearo. He only used the reg occasionally to go deep in Florida to shoot groupers and also to dive in Southern California for scallops and occasionally lobsters. He actually could care less about scuba or the gear.
He only used it with one single second stage, no octo or SPG. When it got hard to breath he came up. It was about as simple as that.
He actually bent himself while using this reg. He was diving in Florida and went to 200 feet on a single AL 80, no SPG, on air. He was doing his stops according to navy tables and ran out of air somewhere in the 50 foot range and had to do a free ascent and as such blew off a bunch of deco, (yeah I know, genius!). The result was within a few minutes his shoulder blew up with gas under the skin (subcutaneous embolism) and looked like somebody filled his skin with air. After that his shoulder hurt like hell in the joint and since then he's had 5 surgeries to try and fix the damage. He never did go to a chamber. That was probably 20 years ago
I'm not sticking up for the guy and I certainly don't approve of his cowboy diving but those are the facts.
The point is, that simple little MK3 went to 200 feet and worked fine.
When I got it it was nasty, corroded, frozen up, it had never even been rinsed one time after he used it in salt water!
I very carefully took it apart and the chrome was so bad and pitted that I decided to just strip it off and try polish out the brass. So far I have the 1st stage done and I've almost got the yolk done.
Next I'm going to work on the diaphram cover and the clamp rings. I don't know what I'm going to do with the 2nd stage body yet, if I'm going to just clean it up or strip off the chrome and polish it.
After all that I'm going to soak it and rebuild it. It's about the dirt simplest reg internally I've ever seen.
I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner. I was thinking of getting one of those $79 ones at Harbor Freight but I'm wondering if CLR would work. It's supposed to disolve salts, scale, rust, corrosion, etc.
Can anybody advise on CLR to soak reg parts?
Here are a few photos of my progress so far:
The pics of the second stage are obviously before shots. Stay tuned, when I am done they will be beautiful!
The first stage used to look like the 2nd stage parts you see.
It's probably from the mid to late 60's, thin yolk, 2 LP ports & one HP port.
The thing has quite a history. First of all it was never serviced once in it's entire lifetime.
The guy who gave it to me was primarily a freedive spearo. He only used the reg occasionally to go deep in Florida to shoot groupers and also to dive in Southern California for scallops and occasionally lobsters. He actually could care less about scuba or the gear.
He only used it with one single second stage, no octo or SPG. When it got hard to breath he came up. It was about as simple as that.
He actually bent himself while using this reg. He was diving in Florida and went to 200 feet on a single AL 80, no SPG, on air. He was doing his stops according to navy tables and ran out of air somewhere in the 50 foot range and had to do a free ascent and as such blew off a bunch of deco, (yeah I know, genius!). The result was within a few minutes his shoulder blew up with gas under the skin (subcutaneous embolism) and looked like somebody filled his skin with air. After that his shoulder hurt like hell in the joint and since then he's had 5 surgeries to try and fix the damage. He never did go to a chamber. That was probably 20 years ago
I'm not sticking up for the guy and I certainly don't approve of his cowboy diving but those are the facts.
The point is, that simple little MK3 went to 200 feet and worked fine.
When I got it it was nasty, corroded, frozen up, it had never even been rinsed one time after he used it in salt water!
I very carefully took it apart and the chrome was so bad and pitted that I decided to just strip it off and try polish out the brass. So far I have the 1st stage done and I've almost got the yolk done.
Next I'm going to work on the diaphram cover and the clamp rings. I don't know what I'm going to do with the 2nd stage body yet, if I'm going to just clean it up or strip off the chrome and polish it.
After all that I'm going to soak it and rebuild it. It's about the dirt simplest reg internally I've ever seen.
I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner. I was thinking of getting one of those $79 ones at Harbor Freight but I'm wondering if CLR would work. It's supposed to disolve salts, scale, rust, corrosion, etc.
Can anybody advise on CLR to soak reg parts?
Here are a few photos of my progress so far:
The pics of the second stage are obviously before shots. Stay tuned, when I am done they will be beautiful!
The first stage used to look like the 2nd stage parts you see.
