R109 lever height

[Texfrazer]

Ok, since I had some free cash floating around from selling a subwoofer, I picked up the 'bay auction for all of those disassembled 108s and 109s. I'll check out all of the levers and see what I get and report back.

P.S. Don't ask why I wanted all of those until I figure out what to tell the wife

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

Tex,

I saw that auction, and was sorely tempted, but saw absolutely no way to justify all the "parts" to my wife... glad you got them though.

If we need "spares", we know who to call

Best wishes.

 

[Couv]

Ditto.....started to rearrange my closet for more space but came to my senses just in time. Let us know what they look like Tex.

c

 

[aquaregia]

Let me know if there's a spare duro poppet assembly in there

 

[mkgriesinger]

To clear the air-I do not know much about rebuilding regulators. I took my R109s to the local scuba pro dive shop so they can be upgraded to r156. The tech said that he was able to upgrade, but the spring was way to stiff and breathing would have been crazy.He said he has done this in the past without problem. Could this be because of the leaver?

 

[redacted]

To clear the air-I do not know much about rebuilding regulators. I took my R109s to the local scuba pro dive shop so they can be upgraded to r156. The tech said that he was able to upgrade, but the spring was way to stiff and breathing would have been crazy.He said he has done this in the past without problem. Could this be because of the leaver?

Part of that upgrade is replacing the heavy spring from the 109 with a much lighter spring. That lighter spring is the same as is used in the S600 and G250. In fact, all the parts required for that upgrade are used in current Scubapro regs. Sounds likie the only thing you are missing is a knowledgeable tech.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

My guess is that he swapped poppets but did not switch to the far lighter spring used with the balanced poppet. "done this in the past" can also mean "used to know how to do it but forgot".

Generally, the older levers bind on all the new poppets - balances or unbalanced. The original unbalanced poppet in the R109 was very short with a large hole in the poppet rather than a tab to engage the lever. The ball used as a spring pad was replaced with a flat disc and the popper was lengthended to make up the difference with the next iteration of the poppet, but the hole for the tabs on the lever were still large. It has just been the latest poppets that caused the problem.

 

[mkgriesinger]

Thanks, Just wrote the following email:

I know that you tried the upgrade for the R109s and said that the spring was to stiff. When you were doing the upgrade did you use the old spring? I was doing some reading and found that the unbalanced R109s use a much heaver spring than the balanced R156s. People found that the spring in the S600 or G250 fixed the problem.
Regards,
Michael

 

[Couv]

Michael,

Here are the parts and part numbers needed for the upgrade:
Balance chamber 11150102
Spring 01020216
poppet assembly 11250015
and maybe, but not likely a lever 11250141

Couv

 

[halocline]

I just replaced an older lever in a balanced/adjustable with a current lever, courtesy of awap. The newer lever has a "shallower" angle at the feet, which looks like it would result in a higher, not lower, lever height. At first I skeptical because I assumed that the lever was already too high.

Imagine my surprise when I found that the height was almost the same; this is because the "fingers" on the diaphragm end of the lever are also set in a different angle. Further, it turned out that with the old lever and the diaphragm off, I only had to loosen the orifice about 1/4 turn to get it to flow. IOW, it was not lever height that was causing the reg to breathe pretty stiff.

The new levers have this nice curved surface on the feet, which I suspect allows them to act on the poppet tabs with less friction and a nice smooth action. The reg does now crack at lower resistance. My next experiment will be to file the feet on the old lever a bit, see if that helps.

Earlier in this thread I suggested that if the s-wing poppet is sticking in the air tube, a bit of lube might help things. That's not a good idea, but since this poppet was sticking a bit, I decided to file just a little off the wings on the poppet that keep it centered in the tube; not the tabs that catch on the lever. It worked great.