To me 3 days is not a long time to wait for the reg to bleed down, so I did not need to loosen anything under pressure. At this point I have returned the Calypso repair kit that I mistakenly bought from VDH. The description plainly said " for piston 1st stage" but I did not realize that mine had a diaphragm until it was disassembled. Today I cleaned and reassembled the complete reg 1st & 2nd stage and labeled it (out of service) due to bad HP seat in 1st stage. Now I am going to shop for another 1st stage to use as a tire inflator. Do you have an opinion on brands or models?
Vintage Calypso first stage diagram
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JamesBon92007
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Personally I like the piston first stages--I've only had one I could not get back to fully functional and that's just because the O-rings don't seem to be standard. I bought a used diaphragm first stage (to use for air tools) and can't get it to stop leaking past the diaphragm. There seems to be lots of people on SB who very much prefer diaphragm first stages for diving and some day I'll have to ask them why 
Before I buy any old, used equipment any more first I check places such as VDH and Northeast Scuba before I buy anything to make sure parts are available. I also check to make sure manuals are available too.
Before I buy any old, used equipment any more first I check places such as VDH and Northeast Scuba before I buy anything to make sure parts are available. I also check to make sure manuals are available too.
Lots of reasons to prefer diaphragm regs but for use as pressure regulators for things like tire inflators and other lower pressure applications, diaphragms are the only way to go because you can adjust the IP to a much lower pressure with no modification to the reg. I have seen a few that would go almost to 0 pis. When using piston regs you are more or less stuck with whatever IP comes out of it. There are a couple of externally adjustable piston regs but I have no clue what their adjustment range is .
JamesBon92007
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In that case I'll keep working on my old SportsWays first stage--I've been using a secondary regulator to control the pressure after getting it to 130 psi or so.
I have never had trouble setting IP on my Aquarius and Micra regs, but I never tried to dial them down either. For what I use the old Calypso for, tire chuck and blow gun, it seemed like the IP fell off as the volume increased. It would blow hard and then slack off pretty fast. It seems to work for me, but I am still wondering about the difference between the Calypso and Conshelf first stages?
There seems to be lots of people on SB who very much prefer diaphragm first stages for diving and some day I'll have to ask them why
All regs i seen, the diaphragm regs have opening to counterpressurechamber in the end, and the pistons have it as holes around the body.
I think it is more easy to environmentaly seal a regulator with the opening in the end of the body.
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