With respect, your posts repeatedly ask basic questions with regard to regulator service. The lever movement above, for example, is perfectly normal.
Yes it seems normal when the metal barrel is completely out of the body and you observe the plastic sleeve rotates a bit on an axis around it. I was expecting that once inserted,the inlet hole in the body would hold it in place and prevent even that slight rotation - Which did not happen. The net effect is that lever height at the contact point with diaphragm can vary by an mm or two depending on the tilt/angle of rotation when installed. It must have skipped my attention during the classroom training because I was already overwhelmed by all the new stuff.
While offering advice in response to both basic and esoteric questions is what SB members love to do for each other, it seems as though you're asking us to take you step by step through Vance Harlow.
Nope not at all. Pardon me for giving the wrong impression - but I like to be very chatty online and discuss and triple check every small detail, niggle and my first impressions - this is how I like to engage my mind and compel myself to think deeper about the topic and progressively redo stuff that I am working on. Please bear in mind that I come from a non-English speaking country where very little if any, new technical knowledge and information is generated or shared socially or publicly or in an open-source fashion locally (even in Native languages). Also the fact that over-population and competition for jobs and livelihood in my part of the world result in a closet culture without a free information exchange (where you earn your job and livelihood because the other doesn’t know shite therefore suppressing information and knowledge is key), or that even the fact that I am doing this merely as a hobby and not professionally as a competitor in the job market is moot. And it is almost certain that while 9 out of 10 technicians in my part of the world will do a great job in fixing regulators having learnt by doing first as apprentices and then accumulating their work experience, they won’t have the capacity( due to comparatively poor education levels) to read a technical and dense manual in English to the finish or be able explain to me why the tilt angle of the lever will or will not affect the performance of the 2nd stage. Hence I am chatty here instead.
Moreover, I did the hands-on classroom back in March ‘24 and then unfortunately my hectic work schedule did not allow me to approach my first attempt at servicing until a whole 9 months later in December . And then I refused to even attempt it on weekends in the interim period until I had completed the book “Regulator Saavy”, reading each paragraph at least three times over at first attempt, until I was sure I understood the gist of the stuff and the hows and whys… so unlike during my classroom training and first-exposure back then, I can assuredly identify every little piece and part in the regulators that I am currently working on, and the reason it’s there - its role and purpose and how it all fits in and the overall “how stuff works” part (if not the finer details like for example - materials used in o-rings and importance of the many technical specifications like hardness/duro - that many of you can explain better with your more advanced level of learning and proficiency).
"One doesn't know what one doesn't know." We don't want you to hurt yourself. Go spend a day at an active dive shop with a tech or ask someone experienced to run you through the basics.
No doubt that this is one of the many 1000s of skills and trades that is learned best as an apprentice under supervision! And I sorely miss it and yearn for it too! But the nearest dive shop technician is at least 300kms away from where I live. It is a condition that I re-attend classroom every two years to keep my official vendor certification (which means little to me in any case - when you don’t work in a dive shop servicing dozens of regs every week) but I intend to do that even though I have no commercial interest in this or for the sake of a livelihood - just for the sake of re-learning stuff that I missed due to mental overload on first try (For example the BCD bits like AIR2 that I will never ever use) …
I do have a technician from the dive shop on WhatsApp to check with but have to wait for responses during his office hours and prefer “thinking out loud” here on SB - it is certainly not the case that I am holding my breath waiting for an answer before I perform any next step on my own logic - as I will explain below.
If your S600 lever truly doesn't drop as you advance the orifice, parts have not been installed correctly. Get some hands-on assistance, my friend.
Ok, I made that original post as soon as I had made my first attempt (being opportunistically chatty as always), but soon enough I depressed the lever and screwed the orifice all the way in and saw that the lever fully dropped in a quick test. And then I had to redo the adjustments again later, even after it passed the water cracking pressure test and bubble tests, because I realised the s600 wasn’t free-flowing with a purge with the Venturi in dive-mode - which I got it to successfully do on a re-attempt after readjusting the orifice position and the spring-load via the micro-adjust. I guess there will always be these kind of doubts and little confusions when the instruction manual says “push the orifice into the barrel and make 2-3 turns …” - Did the manual mean 2-3 complete 360 turns? Or the normal hand motion that result in just a quarter of a turn? I think I did just 2-3 1/12 turns, being afraid to push the orifice in too deep at first attempt and so the lever wasn’t depressing visibly with each turn when I expected it drop and create a bit of slack with just the slightest rattle… (which I may have gotten right by fluke during the classroom) … these are the things for which one needs supervision under an experienced hand watching over your shoulder to resolve those instant doubts, but honestly that is not an option for me. Hence I hangout here pestering and probing for some answers or clues that lead to some kind of spark and ignition…
Lastly this post is just to clear the air - It wasn’t like “OMG! I am stuck and I don’t know what to do next to fix it…” - I actually did stuff to fix it on my own. Sorry for the spam folks! But I don’t think I am struggling at that level… Neither am I feeling insulted by suggestions that I don’t know what I am doing. It’s just beginner novice level doubts given that I lack the hands-on feel of things. In the absence of an immediate teacher to talk to and clarify, I am only creating deeper neural connections in my brain by engaging myself and posting here and ruminating over small technicalities even if I don’t get immediately useful replies to my posts.
Some practical discoveries (sometimes belated) like a lever can rotate around an axis may not be typically covered in textbooks or the usual discussion unless highlighted and questioned. I guess the answer lies in the idea that a 1-2mm slack expected for a lever should account for the slight height increase when tilted?
I hope to test the regs in a swimming pool this Sunday at 6-9ft depth … hopefully that will be the litmus test that also qualifies my regulator servicing attempt for the deep oceans at 30-40mtrs on my next vacation coming soon.
Cheers for now! I keep learning from you folks as always … that’s why I am here and not in a pub discussing the latest phones and gadgets with people that contribute nothing to my existence locally here… (and for the record - this is my go to pub instead! I am usually browsing here with a beer in hand …
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