Super-smooth valves............

[nickb]

............and a mild apology to Mal Bridgeman.

I took my ECS 15s into Bristol Channel Diving last week as they needed a hydro.

Brocky said that he'd hydro & O2 clean the cylinders and I could service the valves myself if I wanted to.

So I popped in yesterday afternoon, stripped the manifold down and bunged the bits in his ultrasonic bath. The manifold is an Agir Brokk and although it was pretty good when new, it's got very stiff over time and an inspection of the O-rings I removed revealed why. They are cheap, crappy, green Chinese things that had started to disintegrate pretty badly, one was almost completely flat.

So I rummaged about in Neil's very extensive supply of every possible O-ring a diver could ever need and fished out a set of Nitrile replacements.

When I took the bits out of the ultrasonic, some of the green stuff was still evident so I got to work with some cotton buds and citric acid solution to clean them up. Once everything was nice & shiny, I dried the bits with high-pressure nitrogen, lightly greased the replacement O-rings with some new grease that Neil's trying out and re-assembled it all.

Naturally the valves felt all smooth and were really slick to turn, but they're always like that with no pressure behind them. The test would be what they're like with 230 bar going through them.

I reassembled the twinset, stickered them up and Neil stamped them. Then I blasted some air into them, checked they were air-tight then filled them up.

The valves remained super-easy to turn, much better than when they were new. I compared them with some old-old-style MDE valves on a twinset that I'm looking after for a mate and they are as good as those.

Only time will tell if they remain as good and it'll be interesting to see how good this new grease is in 12 months time as it's a lot cheaper than Christolube or Krytox apparently. I don't want to be having to strip the valves down every couple of months, but a few hours spent doing this every 15 months while the O2 routine's being done and I'll be a happy bunny.

[jackdiver]

Out of interest, what new grease is it?

Tribolube 71?

[nickb]

Out of interest, what new grease is it?

Tribolube 71?

Yeah, I think that was the name

For those that don't know, Tribology is the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribology

[Mal Bridgeman]

............and a mild apology to Mal Bridgeman.

Since I didn;t actually demand one does that break the Friday rules? I hope Janoos is not around to pick you up on it

Mal