Scubapro technical help please

[redacted]

Bought my G500 in early '99 and performance finally deteriorated enough that I decided to do more than minor adjustments. Time for disassembly, cleaning & inspection. I was not too surprised to find that the guts were quite different than the 12/97 schematic I had gotten as I knew the G500 had been through a number of improvements. In fact the configuration look much like the 03/01 schematic of the S600 with one surprising difference. The poppet on the S600 has 2 small o-rings which seal the end of the poppet inside the balance chamber. My poppet only had one. It looked like the end of the poppet was cut off or broken at the recess for the 2nd o-ring. At first I thought it was broken off and the end of the poppet was lodges inside the balance chamber. But after much study and probing with various diameter nylon fishing line, I concluded that was not the case. What I initially thought was the white poppet end and 2nd o-ring was really excess christolube and the narrowed down portion of the balance chamber. O-rings didn't look too bad and in spite of a set in the LP seat; I cleaned it up, relubed and reassembled. So far, it looks like performance is restored and all is fine. I don't want to commit a service kit unnecessarily if the poppet needs replacement. But I'm wondering if the poppet configuration is normal or if I should look to replace it with one with 2 o-ring seals. I did have a problem last year with a very small leak that I decided was coming from the balance chamber (a small bubble of air every 10 seconds from the second while soaking in tub under pressure). Problem went away when I adjusted the balance chamber.

So, is the single o-ring poppet OK? If not, will a 2 o-ring poppet fit OK in that balance chamber? (I made a probe from a Q-tip and there looks to be enough room in the chamber for a slightly longer poppet)

Thanks.

 

[sexyscubadiver]

The single o-ring poppet should be okay. If you replace it with a new series two o-ring poppet, you should replace the balance chamber. Both of these are in the annual service kit. It is not neccesary to replace the balance chamber however....

 

[redacted]

It seems to be working fine. The service kits I have do not do not include balance chamber or poppet. But that is not a problem now that I know I have a valid configuration.

Thanks again.