Hi Porter
@oldairdude,
I missed your introduction post until just now. So, here’s my belated welcome to Scubaboard. And a congrats on your retirement.
It was nice to see your mention of interest to share knowledge on this forum. And I’ll say for anyone reading this, your company and you specifically have been an amazing resource for me and other Bauer owners. Everything from sourcing no longer available parts, to fitting questions, to the best prices around. Thank you!
No reason you would remember me, but you helped to get my Utilus 10 going a while back. We added some shims on the crankshaft to stop sideways movement and wear on one of the rods. The compressor is approaching 100 hours after this adjustment and no signs of metal on metal wear in the oil. Yay! For those who don’t know, Utilus 10 is the precursor to the Bauer Junior and shares most of the same parts other than second stage water separator.
My compressor has unknown total hours and acquired with no history. There were some visible signs of wear/light scoring in cylinder #1 during initial inspection when I got the compressor, and the 1st stage reed valve had quite a bit of carbon and discoloration. But still, it’s pumping reliably up to the 3500psi OPV. Second stage temp gets to about 235f and the other two cylinders are in the ~160 max, although I don’t monitor them as closely. I typically fill LP tanks to 2700psi with 30% Nitrox and it purrs like a sewing machine at just over 80 decibels.
Here’s my question:
I’m running it every week and would like to proactively address or be prepared for any issues that might cause a loss of use or catastrophic damage. Having to deal with a local dive shop for fills is not an acceptable alternative. Spending a little extra $ now is no issue if it helps ensure uninterrupted fills.
What should I do?
- Start accumulating all the replacement valves and rings and begin swapping out?
- Go ahead and replace the first stage reed and rings since they do have significant wear?
- Save my $ for a third stage piston replacement?
- Buy an entire 1000 hour service kit that has lots of potentially unneeded parts?
Or just do nothing and wait for a valve to stick or a ring to stop holding pressure before reacting and know that I can quickly order any needed parts from your shop? I’m hesitant to just let it go out of fear my bill and downtime would be much larger if waiting until a failure occurs.
Thanks for your thoughts, George