Question Skipping 1st stage Maintenance?

[halocline]

Thanks! Doing the training course(s) has increased my appetite for more and I am really looking forwards to the journey of learning and understanding various components of SCUBA gear in more nitty-gritty details and finding that sense of grip over my own personal safety by maintaining their state and performance…

Regarding the inline IPG - There is of course going to that other big IPG positioned right next to the Magnahelic to eyeball the drop in IP as the Magnahelic needle swings around the cracking pressure - so that’s the reason I am wondering what specific use the additional smaller inline IPG will have on the inline adjuster.

From my online research I found that one simply has to unplug the HP and LP ports on the analog Magnahelic and turn a screw exposed on the dial at the base of the needle - to reset it back to 0 for calibration, while the digital version has a sensor one cannot fiddle with - or can we? Is there a reset button for it?

Incidentally I’m having to order all my requirements from three different online stores because none of them have everything I need.

You don’t need an inline adjustment tool with an IP gauge attached to it. You can easily just listen to hear it leaking. In fact, I serviced my regs (many!) for years without an inline tool and I still have several 2nd stages that the tool doesn’t work on, so I do those the old fashioned way; remove the hose, depress the purge, and adjust the orifice. It’s not that complicated, you can get just as good results, and it only takes a few more minutes. You only need to tighten the hose hand tight each time, not wrench-tight. The one thing is that you do have to turn off the tank and depressurize each time, so assuming you are using a tank at home as your supply, you will use a bit more air. You talked about getting a pony reg to use to work on your regs; that’s fine but a full size tank is more convenient because you won’t go through air as quickly, and ideally you want to check IP with both a full and near empty tank. You can simulate the near empty by shutting off the valve and lightly bumping the purge, watching the SPG go down to 500 or so. I’ve been doing that for years.

I have found that servicing my own regulators and really striving to learn how the work has been great for my diving enjoyment. I have zero worry about regulators failing on a dive.

BTW, you mentioned something else early in this thread, something about your life depends on your regulators working. That is flat out wrong and an unsafe attitude about diving. All dive training includes learning how to deal with regulator failure, through air sharing, redundant air supplies, immediate access to the surface, or a combination of those. Very, very few people would actually dive recreationally if a regulator failure meant death. It’s really an obvious thing, it’s a shame that this myth has been propagated fro so long. Hopefully now that you are learning about working on these pretty simple devices, you’ll see through statements like that. Have fun!

 

[Pearlman]

You don’t need an inline adjustment tool with an IP gauge attached to it. You can easily just listen to hear it leaking.
…
I have found that servicing my own regulators and really striving to learn how the work has been great for my diving enjoyment. I have zero worry about regulators failing on a dive.
…
BTW, you mentioned something else early in this thread, something about your life depends on your regulators working.

Yeah my question about the inline IPG was because one may already have the bigger 4” Magnahelic and IPG setup on the workbench so what’s a third mini IPG going to do at that location? I am thinking perhaps if doing field repairs on a boat in noisy and windy conditions one cannot hear the hiss… and the guage is a visual indicator of the same? But who carries an inline adjuster on the field? I’m just trying to imagine a practical use case for it.

Striving to learn is exactly it! The service technician class threw more questions than answers … and I am deeply unsatisfied about how little I know. And so my copy of “Regulator Saavy” will arrive together with a bunch of tools specific to servicing my reg models. The reason I got the inline adjuster and a lot of other seemingly non-essential 5-20$ parts upfront is because if I decide later I want it on a whim, importing those $50 worth of items is going to cost me $30 in shipping add 45% customs duties and then GST taxes on the entire shipping value. And so I got everything I might possibly need for the next few years in just two shipments from two shops with a one-time shipping cost.

My latest hobby of servicing my regs is costing me upfront about the same expense as roughly 30 dives at a vacation destination (adding up the anticipated customs duties and local GST on invoice+shipping >60% in total) but hey I need something to do and excite my mind - what’s life without hobbies?

Yeah I skipped the pony because there was none available locally that was cheaper than an AL80 and the thought of running to a shop for a gas refill through dense traffic more often did not make sense either. Instead I am getting an AL80 in semi-gloss electric blue from Al-Can - they are a domestic manufacturer in my country that export worldwide. Hence much cheaper than a US or EU products pricing for me.

PS - I plan to DIY a wooden frame for the two 4” dials then mount it on a monitor stand with swivel arm that clamps to my workbench thus reducing the risk of a fall. Any pros and cons to this idea?

Ok I guess I was being bombastic when I mentioned “dying…”

 

[BoltSnap]

That is flat out wrong and an unsafe attitude about diving. All dive training includes learning how to deal with regulator failure, through air sharing, redundant air supplies, immediate access to the surface, or a combination of those. Very, very few people would actually dive recreationally if a regulator failure meant death. It’s really an obvious thing, it’s a shame that this myth has been propagated fro so long. Hopefully now that you are learning about working on these pretty simple devices, you’ll see through statements like that. Have fun!

This is so wrong and totally not true. Your life depends on several factors including the safe functioning of your dive equipment, among other factors. You regulator is part of life support equipment for sure. You buy the best appropriate regulator and take care of it and know how to use it because if it malfunctions for any reason, your life can be at serious jeopardy. And yes, some people died in the past because their regulator malfunctioned by stopping delivering air or giving too much air leading to the diver to die eventually. We take precautions to make sure that we have back up plans and take care of our regulator to prevent this scenario.

 

[buddhasummer]

search YouTube, there is a nice video of step by step servicing a MK-17....

I have the SP service video, happy to share it but I'm IT challenged and have never figure out how to share it, it's a large file. Anyone wants it and knows how I can do it and is willing to baby speak me through it give me a shout

 

[buddhasummer]

This is so wrong and totally not true. Your life depends on several factors including the safe functioning of your dive equipment, among other factor. You regulator is part of life support equipment for sure. You buy the best appropriate regulator and take care of it and know how to use because if it malfunctions for any reason, your life can be at serious jeopardy. And yes, some people died in the past because their regulator malfunctioned by stopping delivering air or giving too much air leading to the diver to die eventually. We take precautions to make sure that we have back up plans and take care of our regulator to prevent this scenario.

 

[BoltSnap]

I have the SP service video, happy to share it but I'm IT challenged and have never figure out how to share it, it's a large file. Anyone wants it and knows how I can do it and is willing to baby speak me through it give me a shout

Do you know how to upload to "dropbox" (or similar file sharing services)? How big is it anyways?

 

[buddhasummer]

Do you know how to upload to "dropbox" (or similar file sharing services)? How big is it anyways?

I have tried to save to DB before but it wouldn't download. My DB is now full. It's more than 1gb.

 

[Pearlman]

This is so wrong and totally not true. Your life depends on several factors including the safe functioning of your dive equipment, among other factor.

True - as a new diver still within a 75 logged dive count, I have been challenged by fighting strong currents where letting go and drifting away was not an option for example at Verde islands in P.G somewhere under the “washing machine” at the surface, or at Crystal Rock at Komodo. Dealing with a reg failure at these times would have been catastrophic - It is likely I would have been unable to cope with equipment failure without entering a panic state in those moments.

On another current thread about self-service reg failures a member posted how he inserted an O-ring the wrong way and it checked out fine on the workbench and also did some 50 dives with the regs in that state. So it’s easy to say start with an easy diving day to test your regs but some errors may slip through only to suddenly encounter some kind of problem to deal with and further task-load an unfortunate diver at the wrong time on a bad day!

I have the SP service video, happy to share it but I'm IT challenged and have never figure out how to share it, it's a large file. Anyone wants it and knows how I can do it and is willing to baby speak me through it give me a shout

Thank you! I am actually mid-way through member rsingler’s mk19evo tear down and educational video and that is an exact match to my requirements. I will be most happy to also observe the differences with the MK17 - could you not simply upload to YouTube using your gmail account? Dropbox would be a private share and perhaps not the best way to put an educational or instructional video out in the world. It would be nice to let everyone benefit from your efforts.

 

[buddhasummer]

True - as a new diver still within a 75 logged dive count, I have been challenged by fighting strong currents where letting go and drifting away was not an option for example at Verde islands in P.G somewhere under the “washing machine” at the surface, or at Crystal Rock at Komodo. Dealing with a reg failure at these times would have been catastrophic - I would have been unable to cope.

On another current thread about self-service reg failures a member posted how he inserted an O-ring the wrong way and it checked out fine on the workbench and also did some 50 dives with the reg in that state. So it’s easy to say start with an easy diving day to test your regs but some errors may slip through only to suddenly encounter some kind of problem to deal with and further task-load an unfortunate diver at the wrong time on a bad day!



Thank you! I am actually mid-way through member rsingler’s mk19evo tear down and educational video and that is an exact match to my requirements. I will be most happy to also observe the differences with the MK17 - could you not simply upload to YouTube using your gmail account? Dropbox would be a private share and perhaps not the best way to put an educational or instructional video out in the world. It would be nice to let everyone benefit from your efforts.

I don't know, can I

 

[buddhasummer]

"Simply"