R109 Sealing Issue

[Couv]

Just to reiterate:

1st: ensure you have a steady IP.
2nd: if you have lever #3 in the picture, change it out.
3rd: I'd change the poppet seat and start over as it may be engraved beyond usefulness
(I think Santa will be making an early delivery of a couple seats made by a Master Seat Maker)
Have a good look through a 10 power magnifying glass at the orifice-make sure it isn't defective.

Edit: Cut and pasted from a PM is sent to someone else:

Here is a time saving tip you may find helpful, especially if you don't have an in line adjustment tool. Unlike some of the other Usual Suspects, I'm not too concerned about pre-setting the orifice. Put everything else in first, then the orifice and screw it down until you see a very slight drop in lever height. Then, before you hook up the lp hose to the second stage, use the "Couv-mouth-vacuum test" by drawing a vacuum on the barrel and adjust the orifice until you can just no longer draw air past the seat and orifice. If you do that first, you will be very close to having the orifice in the correct spot. Then put on the diaphragm, cover etc and hose and make another adjustment using the same vacuum method. Lastly, hook up the hose and make the final adjustment.

If all else fails (and I would do this anyway) convert it to a Balanced Adjustable. There is a little more monkey motion but a BA is easier to tune and hold tune longer due to the lighter spring.


c

 

[Zung]

Yeah, the couv-magic works wonderful. I use a slight derivative of it: I blow instead of suck.

The problem with the BA conversion is that the spring can be hard to find. I went through my LDS's part bin last week and there was none, so he had to special order them for me. Has anybody found an alternative source?

 

[Couv]

Yeah, the couv-magic works wonderful. I use a slight derivative of it: I blow instead of suck.

The problem with the BA conversion is that the spring can be hard to find. I went through my LDS's part bin last week and there was none, so he had to special order them for me. Has anybody found an alternative source?

I suck, as I was given to understand one can produce more pressure that way. But how about one of you guys with a fancy manometer check that out for the group?

Yes, that would be cool if we could come up with an alternate source for the BA springs.

c

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I took a glance at McMaster-Carr (one of my new favorite places, thanks to you guys ), and they do sell SS springs in a pretty wide variety of sizes.... I wonder if the spring is a Scubapro-unique part, or if Scubapro used an off-the-shelf spring themselves....

Best wishes.

 

[Couv]

Earth to Luis, Earth to Luis H.....come in Luis.

I would bet our resident engineer could answer that question.

PM on the way.

c

Edit: Should read I would bet....not I would be.

 

[jacked_72]

I have very good news to report. The other lever made a substantial difference with the hesitation. The remainder of the problem seems to have gone away with flipping the seat. I'm sure with all of my adjusting, I must have cut into into the seat some. I've got it to the point where it breaths well. I'll have to take it under water to see how it does for real!

Thank you everyone for your help. And thank you especially Santa!

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I love a happy ending!!!!

Glad you got it working. Let us know how it dives.

Best wishes.

 

[Luis H]

Earth to Luis, Earth to Luis H.....come in Luis.

I would be our resident engineer could answer that question.

PM on the way.

c

Hi Couv


It could easily be a custom spring. Custom springs (and custom O-rings) are not very expensive if you are ordering any kind of quantity. Even for the relatively low manufacturing volume of Scuba regulators it could easily be a custom spring.

Bryan at VDH actually have springs custom made to specifically match the original springs on some of the vintage double hose regulators. If you look at the price that he sells them you can tell that they are very reasonable.

There are four variables required to specify a typical compression coil spring:
Outside diameter
Wire gauge (or wire diameter)
Relaxed spring height
Number of free coils (the actual number of free coils is sometimes hard to estimate accurately, if it has a low number of coils).

The combination of all four parameters will determine the spring rate. The spring rate is the spring force per inch of compression.

Notice that I mentioned typical compression spring. Scubapro actually used a variable coil pitch (numbers of coils per inch) in some of the 109 regulators.

The spring for the balanced adjustable could just happen to be close enough to an of the shelf spring. I am planning on working on some 109/BA this weekend. I will try to measure the spring for the BA.


If you do a Google search for “compression coil springs”, you will find much more information that could be helpful.

At one time we were able to find an of the shelf spring to replace the heavy adjustable spring on a Royal Aqua Master first stage (Herman actually placed a group order at the time). The match was as close to perfect as one could expect. In some cases it actually worked better than the originals.

 

[Zung]

Long live Luis!
Long live Luis!
Long live Luis!

I thought about taking some measurements last weekend, but of course forgot all about it. Now my last spring is burried deep inside a G250 that breathes wonderful and I'd hate to disturb it by taking it apart again.

 

[herman]

Here is the company that I ordered the DA/RAM springs from. Compression Spring Search - Century Spring Corp.
This page is their compression spring search page. If you have most of the technical information (which you can get with a micrometer) you can come close to getting one that should work. Varible ratio springs are a problem. Unless you are ordering a lot of them, I would think it would be cheaper to just get SP ones. With the old regs, new factory parts were not an option.