Scubapro 2nd Stage Balanced Poppet

[Zung]

Gentle Board,

I have an older style Scubapro poppet for the 109BA/156/G250, the top one in the attached pic. It has a single o-ring and it doesn't have the cutaway at the bottom.

Is it worth salvaging? Has anyone compared it to the current one (bottom one in the pic)?

Thanks for any tips.

 

[Couv]

Brother Zung,

The original balanced poppets had a permanently attached soft seat and only one o-ring that went into the balanced chamber. They worked fine, but it seemed like an awful waste to throw them away when a seat and couple of o-rings (one for the removable stem, one for the balance chamber) would have been all that was necessary if they would have been engineered with a replaceable seat.

The current S-wing poppet has two o-rings. But not as a backup to each other-one serves as a wiper and the two together can trap a bit of lubricant between them which is probably a good thing.

Salvage it? Well, if the current replaceable seats and o-rings work, I would certainly leave it in my spare parts kit.

c

 

[redacted]

Salvage it? Well, if the current replaceable seats and o-rings work, I would certainly leave it in my spare parts kit.

c

That is where mine is. The only reason I removed it was kits, at that time, came with the new poppet ready to go.

 

[Zung]

Thanks couv my brother, my mine must be an in-between version with a replaceable seat.

awap, that's the answer I'm looking for: I've decided to give my dog (R109) one last chance to redeem itself. Since I have 2 poppets, a brand new one with 2 o-rings and this older one, I was wondering which one to use.

So the brand new one it'll be.

 

[redacted]

Thanks couv my brother, my mine must be an in-between version with a replaceable seat.

awap, that's the answer I'm looking for: I've decided to give my dog (R109) one last chance to redeem itself. Since I have 2 poppets, a brand new one with 2 o-rings and this older one, I was wondering which one to use.

So the brand new one it'll be.

I'd use the old one in case the problem with the 109 is not related to the poppet. They both work fine. I guess SP was having (or anticipated) problems with that single delicate o-ring and decided to add the wiper.

In fact, I just looked in my spares and I guess I installed my old single o-ring plastic poppet in a 109 that I am using to test the Trident rivet style seat. No sense in wasting a new one unnecessarily.

 

[Zung]

Aye Aye Master, so the old one it'll be.
That's a lot of variables to play with, and therefore a lot of fun.

 

[Zung]

I have this R109 in very good to excellent conditions, the chrome is still intact, no dings, no nicks, just some fine scratches.

It was serviced in Nov. 2000 by a store in LA, and has been sitting in my nephew's closet until last year when I liberated it.

I was EXTREMELY disappointed the 1st time I dove it: this thing is a DOG! It breathes about as horrible as the AL LPO (Low Performance Octopus). Back to the closet it went, my closet this time.

I pulled it out last week, adjusted the orifice best I could, and put it through the manometer: 42mm/1.65" of water. We're getting somewhere, but we're not there yet: all of our G250's are in the 25mm/1" of water range.

Time to open it up: everything's shiny like new inside, but the seat is deeply marked. And so for the kick of it, I introduce a lot of variables to void any attempt at scientific before/after comparison and/or repeatability:

• A single o-ring older balanced poppet
• A slightly oversized o-ring: 2.5x1mm instead of 2.2x1mm
• A Trident after market seat

Now the manometer reads 22mm/.87" of water, about on par with the rest of our corral.

On land, the thing breathes quite pleasantly, real smooth, but without the "kickdown" effect of the G250's venturi.

I've got some questions:

• The lever seems to engage the poppet correctly, but it sticks out about 1/2", like awap reported before
• When I put the cover on I have to adjust the ortifice quite a bit more to stop the freeflow, maybe half a turn or so

Does it matter?

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I have this R109 in very good to excellent conditions, the chrome is still intact, no dings, no nicks, just some fine scratches.

It was serviced in Nov. 2000 by a store in LA, and has been sitting in my nephew's closet until last year when I liberated it.

I was EXTREMELY disappointed the 1st time I dove it: this thing is a DOG! It breathes about as horrible as the AL LPO (Low Performance Octopus). Back to the closet it went, my closet this time.

I pulled it out last week, adjusted the orifice best I could, and put it through the manometer: 42mm/1.65" of water. We're getting somewhere, but we're not there yet: all of our G250's are in the 25mm/1" of water range.

Time to open it up: everything's shiny like new inside, but the seat is deeply marked. And so for the kick of it, I introduce a lot of variables to void any attempt at scientific before/after comparison and/or repeatability:

• A single o-ring older balanced poppet
• A slightly oversized o-ring: 2.5x1mm instead of 2.2x1mm
• A Trident after market seat

Now the manometer reads 22mm/.87" of water, about on par with the rest of our corral.

On land, the thing breathes quite pleasantly, real smooth, but without the "kickdown" effect of the G250's venturi.

I've got some questions:

• The lever seems to engage the poppet correctly, but it sticks out about 1/2", like awap reported before
• When I put the cover on I have to adjust the ortifice quite a bit more to stop the freeflow, maybe half a turn or so

Does it matter?

I went through something very similar with my 109, but in my case it was compounded by pitting on the edge of the orifice (to my "old" eyes it looked fine, but with a 10x loupe it looked like the surface of the moon ).

I carefully resurfaced the orifice, and got the cracking effort to improve from about 2.2 to about 1.2. It was a dramatic improvement.

So, while it may not have anything to do with what you are experiencing, looking closesly at the orifice if you have not already done so might help.

Good luck!

Best wishes.

Edit: Ooops, I misread your post, sorry.... you did get the cracking effort down.... ignore the above

 

[Zung]

Thanks LT, I did check the orifice, and it's OK; actually it's in better conditions than the loupe I use to shoot macros.

 

[redacted]

I would not worry about half a turn on the orifice. Its when I'm looking at a full turn or more that I start looking for another lever.