Scubapro BA... Low friction lever sleeve

[Open Ocean Diver]

One of my BA I noticed the lever catching in the barrel square holes, I tried the curly lever but no help. Next I did a little filing, (suggested by one of the SB experts) tested and Shazam no more lever catches. Was thinking the G260, and Atomic have lever sleeves for low friction lever action. Seem to me this would be a great 3D print job with the right material or Teflon coat the barrel.

Any thoughts from the SP aficionados?

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

They also have a groove in the air barrel to lock them into place IIRC.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

They also have a groove in the air barrel to lock them into place IIRC.

I guess changing the barrel diameter wouldn't be good either, less engagement with the feet and poppet.

 

[Kupu]

My observation on BA and G260 is that a sliver of paper between the lever arms and barrel does not get pinched when moving the lever up and down.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

My observation on BA and G260 is that a sliver of paper between the lever arms and barrel does not get pinched when moving the lever up and down.

Great we’re onto something.

 

[halocline]

If you're talking about the inside surface of the barrel, I think you want that to stay metal to encourage some condensation and moistening of the air. If you're talking about something that would support the feet of the lever, like a teflon insert in those square holes, I think that would be more work and expense than just getting a new 109. You'd have to enlarge the square holes to accept a bushing of sorts, and devise some way of making sure the bushing stayed exactly in place.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

If you're talking about the inside surface of the barrel, I think you want that to stay metal to encourage some condensation and moistening of the air. If you're talking about something that would support the feet of the lever, like a teflon insert in those square holes, I think that would be more work and expense than just getting a new 109. You'd have to enlarge the square holes to accept a bushing of sorts, and devise some way of making sure the bushing stayed exactly in place.

Just playing with idea of kicking the 109 up a notch. With 3-D printing seems doable to me.

Atomic:
The lever sleeve is a compound with Kevlar added to minimize wear and can perform for many thousands of cycles with no sign of abrasion.

The lever sleeve is a low friction bearing for the lever pivot that will provide hundreds of thousands of cycles without wear.

 

[Kupu]

On the topic of improvements and modifications.

As I was opening up a few BAs to look at air barrels at just now, I noticed something I had not tuned into before. There is variation in how far the mouthpiece barrel (not sure the correct term) extends into the body. They are all more or less flush at the bottom, but vary from flush to extending 4mm at the top.

Looking at 4 random BAs from my box full, one is flush at top, two extend 2mm, and one extends 4mm. I would guess this is an intentional change to improve airflow? Could be a rainy day project to make a few inserts of varying lengths out of milk jug or such, and try them out on a single regulator to see if it makes any difference.

Extending into body 4mm.

Flush to body.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

Not sure why the mouthpiece would have anything to do with a lever sleeve, but that said I looked at a couple 109’s and noticed the air tube outlet isn’t inline with the mouthpiece on one of them. Symmetry is off. Even if they were hand built you would think the fixtures they would of used when brazing would fix this position. Same as you have shown with mouthpiece depth. Seems hard to believe this would of been an engineered adjustment back in the day.