How to: Service your scuba valves

service your valves get them Oh to clean so they're safe and get them so they're nice and smooth for those valve trills [Music] hi and welcome to another episode of now dive TV the process is exactly the same for a single tank valve like this one or a twin set well like these ones so let me show you how to get going and we'll take it step by step they're mainly two types of valves in general or they're much more I guess but the ones you see most often in scuba diving is these ones which basically have a ring on that little part that goes into the valve and and this one which has a little copper ring which actually uses a quite a bit more force when you tighten it up but I'll show you that in a minute and that those two types are the two surface kids you're gonna likely encounter when you open up your valves so the tools you need are obviously a service kit for your valve and 19 millimeter spanner the special valve tool to take the knob off the cylinder valve and maybe a specialized tool to remove the valve from your cylinder a little bit of crystal Lube or Oh to grease that liquid oily substance from narked at ninety also is a very very good product for this this type of service and if you have a ultrasonic cleaner it's not necessary but it's really nice to get everything nice and clean and you'll need some hydrocarbon free soap so get some from a specialized shop or it's usually an industrial cleaner of some sorts usually dive shops have them but get an industrial grade cleaner that is o2 compatible which means it's hydrocarbon free step one is disassembly so first we're gonna take the whole thing apart and then we're gonna inspect all the pieces and see what gets replaced by the service kit and what gets cleaned and put back together here you can see the two different valves it's hard to tell them apart without opening them up because they appear to look the same but for those of you living here in Europe BTS type of valve is usually with the squared of top and that takes these service kits where there's an o-ring the round ones which are ducks or deer zone or even Halcyon valves they usually with the rounded head here they take the service kit with a little copper ring sorry copper ring to tighten everything in place on this type of valve it's exactly the same you take the knob off with the same tools but then usually you need a 17 mil spanner to take this one off and this one is usually a little bit harder to get off because of that copper ring which I'll show you in a second here you can see the copper ring and that usually takes a little bit of fiddling to get underneath and this kind of orange pick it's good for the job because you can just get underneath it and pry it out now this copper ring is a one use only item and that's why it's also in the surface kit but in comparison to the other one this this part is not in the service kit so you need to clean this in the same way as you do the valve in a minute before we get started you obviously need to get your valve off your cylinder now the best tool for doing this is one of these tools it's basically a metal rod with thread on the end that didn't thread on the end and you just screw this in and then with the tap of your hand or with a hammer it should come off nice and easy and there should not be any force required when you take the valve off of your cylinder the same with installing I don't even use this rod for installing it I just screw it on by hand force and with a slight tap a slight tab on the valve that's it I mean you don't need to over tighten these things but we'll get more into detail about that when we do the reassembly part of this video so now that you have your valve off we have to take out the old parts so start by taking off the o-ring this one is reasonably okay but I mean they come in the service kit so we'll change them anyhow but usually some sometimes these get really squished especially if you have one of these cylinders that have a tapered opening then they get completely flat and they're unusable after one let's go so this one gets discarded so we have a new one a fresh one here in the service kit now we need to take off the knob for that we use our little special knob tool pun intended and in side the valve as you can see there these two little teeth they fit right over the bolt there and then when you hold onto the knob you can just unscrew this and you got your little retainer nut this one and a little spring put these to the side then sometimes there is a little washer on this side as well but if you take the knob off then the washer is here a little see-through washer keep that because it's not in the service kit keep these as well cuz they aren't in the surface kid either now here you can see this is why we need the 19 millimeter wrench the 19 millimeter wrench will fit right over there it was right over this it's on par impossible almost to do this by hand so the best thing is to screw this one back into the cylinder and then just unscrew it that way so all you can do is you screw the valve in to the tank doesn't have to be all the way down and then you can easily remove the inside as you can see that's quite tough in there and now we can just by hand unscrew the whole entry insides so now that we have loosened it up we can unscrew the parts and take them apart it's a it's a good tip you can use this tool to take the inside the little screwy thingy out it's actually the seat that makes sure that your tank remains tight when you close it now for those of you who don't know look inside there you can see that little tiny little metal orifice there there that is the high pressure seat to which this little nylon bushing goes up against so you can see there's thread in there and a little bit here that flat bit gets pushed okay I can see the old one see that fork grabs onto this flat bit here and then when you turn the knob your this one gets pushed in and when you turn the other way around close open it up it gets pulled back so when we go to reassemble this valve again it's a key point to lubricate these threats very very well because they'll make your knife make your valves go nice and smooth now we need to take away the dipstick or snorkel or you know whatever your name whatever the name is what this does is basically prevents if you have the breeze or even water in your tank and it runs down when your tank is upside down it doesn't clog the valve or come in your regulator so this is a little a little snorkel if you like so if there's debris or things things inside the tank it won't fall in so we need to take this off because we want to get nice and inside when we do the cleaning with the brush sometimes when you hear tanks and you hear something rattling inside it's usually this one that came loose put this to the side right now our valve is completely disassembled and there's no more moving parts inside step two is the pre cleaner basically get rid of all the old grease and all the you know junk and gunk you can see with your naked eye what I use for cleaning is this GMC stuff this is the special cleaner if you also used for tanks this is going to be good for the pre clean and then afterwards to make it oxygen safe I have this oxy safe citric tank cleaner but it also does a good job of cleaning out residual hydrocarbons so it's very concentrated stuff so a little squeeze in some warm lukewarm water does the trick and the benefit it smells really nice and then we go about with the general pre-clean so what I'm looking for is it's basically get this go prod all the way let's basically you know all the you know old lubrication you can see or you know maybe some residue of an o-ring sometimes these orange orange they dry out especially in higher oxygen rich environments and you want to get all those all that crap out so especially the thread get that nice and clean when I brush this I always brush it as if I'm screwing this this toothbrush out because that why all the debris comes out through the thread so you just clean it a couple of times this way and then the final part you just on the force of the brush is going through the thread you let the brush come out of the hole this is the best way to get rid of all that stuff otherwise it's almost a nightmare to get out seams there you can get one of these small almost like a pipe cleaner if there's any hunters out there you probably have a whole bunch of them laying around just don't use the ones you're using on your gun because they're full of the lubrication that you don't want so buy a new set and use it only for your vows and now for the part where we go a little bit more in depth and we'll take it into the ultrasonic cleaner and that'll get right into all the nooks and crannies inside this little valve step three is now the o2 cleaning which basically is the same thing as the pre cleaning just one more time with the hydrocarbon free soap and in much more detail here is our little ultrasonic cleaner these things are very cheap so you can easily invest in one yourself I've made a little lukewarm water with that cleaning substance make sure all the parts are under the water and I'll turn it on it makes a hell of a noise so when we want to rinse it we take our container clean it out we rinse that first and then just get some new fresh lukewarm water without anything in it make sure you've washed your hands and we go about some rinsing this out so we don't have any residual cleaning agent left and now we got to dry everything off give it a wipe down and then we have to give it a good blast with some dry air the best tool for that job is one of these air guns connected to a regulator and then you can just clean this out makes a hell of a noise but it dries it out really really good a little side note on the pre clean usually it's not necessary if you do this once a year it it's not necessary but sometimes all the valves they accumulate quite a bit of calcium here a good way of getting rid of that is by using a little bit of like citric acid it's like vinegar you can get rid of all that calcium buildup you do it prior in as a part of the pre clean stages so now the valve is clean and nice and dry we can reassemble now let's start with this little snorkel screw it in by hand and give it a little don't go overboard just a little a little bit with a with a wrench so that it doesn't come loose inside your tank now for the internal parts and this is where the little tip comes we have to lubricate these threads here because that makes it a hell of a lot easier for you to turn your valves when you especially when there's pressure on them so you give the thread a tiny little bit of o2 compatible grease and you just turn this in by hand all the way to the bottom the inside of the valve it looks like this that's a little fork then you have an o-ring a plastic washer and then a plastic washer again and then the o-ring here that keeps everything nice and tidy if you push this together this is gonna turn inside that bushing so this one also needs a little bit of lubrication now line up the fork with that seat and as you can see now I can push this all the way down and then you by finger type you can just screw this all the way in now it's very important that you can screw it that you're able to screw it in all the way with your fingers because and there's still a bit of play here in this part because if by chance you haven't tightened let's say if you've done this are now basically the valve is open right on the inside that little valve seat the nylon seat is open so if I go to turn this by hand eventually it'll get resistance right there you can see there's a gap here if I just force it with a wrench or something I'm gonna ruin everything inside so I need to be I need to really you can use the knob for that as well really close the valve if you like and then I'm able with fingers just to close this off completely put the wrench on for the final part take the right one and again we can put it on the tank to just tighten it up just a little bit don't go overboard just a little bit two seconds and now for the knob I always give this little washer also a tiny back dab of lubrication it just makes it a little bit more water repellent and it makes it turn nice and easy when the knob is in place then you put the knob in place then the spring and then that little retainer we take our special tool we just push and turn at the same time while pushing against the springs force and we're turning at the same time until it catches and then you can just keep on going you can eventually see that little tap coming out there you go and just give it just tighten it up don't not too tight just a little bit we go and then you can test oh nothing that's the way a valve should go right nice and smooth there we go now all we need to do is put the o-ring back into place and this valve is good to go now when we go to reassemble the tank develop onto the tank this tank is obviously already clean there is a good point maybe there should be no grease on this o-ring this is a static oring so it means it doesn't move it doesn't need any lubrication plus it's completely sealed inside here so it's not exposed to anything either so no lubrication you need and we thread it in all the way to the bottom and then like I mentioned the little tap is all you need to be able to make sure this is inside if you have one of these tools you can screw this in but usually a tap like that it's more than enough so I hope you've liked this video on how to service and also clean your own valves remember to like and share this video if you have any comments please leave them in the section down below I see [Music]

Channel: N.O.W. Dive

Views: 4,662

Rating: 4.9710145 out of 5

Keywords: diving, Ben, Bos, NOWDIVE, UTD, unified, team, technical, deep, scubadiving, tec, scooter, trimix, egypt, malta, service your scubagear, dir diving, scuba diving equipment

Id: h6tCD6bj44Y

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019