Scubapro rebuild kit shelf life?

[ozziworld]

Recently bought (ebay) a SP Air2 2nd Gen rebuild kit. It appears to be old stock from the 90s. Is there is a shelf life on the o-rings and other "soft" parts. They are still in original packaging dated 2003. The rubber appears fine.

 

[herman]

IF they were stored properly - cool dark place- odds are they are fine. I did some searching for the "shelf life" of orings a while back and the only thing I could find was a recommendation for a 15 year shelf life for Orings used in aviation service. If it's good enough to go in an airplane then I would think they are good enough to go in dive regulators. I rebuild a lot of regs from the early to mid 60s and most of them work fine with just a cleaning and relubing of the original orings..... I don't consider reusing the old orings as an acceptable rebuild, I just do it as a quick way to get it back operating for display use and to look for other mechanical problems before I go through the trouble of hunting down the proper replacements but it does show that most orings will last a lot longer than most think, eps when you consider the mistreatment a lot of these regs have obviously seen..

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The old hyperthane o-rings had a recommended 5 year shelf life and many of those, especially the red colored ones, did get crispy over time, but the EPDM o-rings last pretty much forever on the shelf.

If they are black colored, and don't feel stiff or crispy you are good to go.

 

[redacted]

On the flip side, if they are so old as to have degraded, they will let you know with leaks. Red Scubapro o-rings are often hardened and unusable. But I still have blues and purples in a few of my regs in static applications and no problems with them. And, I have replaced some red o-rings, often on an old 2nd stage orifice, where the o-ring would break apart as it was being removed but was still making the seal or, at worse, just leaking slightly.

 

[Zung]

You don't really need a kit for the AIR2, or most of the classic downstream second stages.
For the price of a kit, you can buy awap's magic punch to fabricate the seats, a bag of SS lock nuts, and a few assorted O-rings, and that'll last at least a couple of generations.

 

[ozziworld]

Thanks everyone for the inputs. The Air2 is still working fine. The question just came up when I was checking out the label.

 

[Zung]

And you can expect it to work for a long time: these guys are very low maintenance. I service mines every 5 years or so, and that's because I'm cautious, not because they need it.