That's One "SALTY" Regulator

see what i got to do to repair everything based off how that metal is squeaking i'm gonna say there's quite a bit of salt in there and holy cow look at that that is absolutely terrible look at all that salt [Music] [Music] what's up guys it's brian again from lake kicker scuba marina if you are new to our channel do me a huge favor make sure you click this little subscribe button over here and ding that little bell as well that way you guys will be notified every time we upload new content now in today's video i'm kind of rehash an older video that we did about dust caps whether you're using a dust cap on a cylinder or a dust cap on a yolk style rig or even more importantly for this video a dust cap on a den regulator i'm going to talk about the importance of them but i'm going to show you how sometimes they can be a nuisance or if you're not using them properly how they can actually damage your gear now what i actually got here is my personal side mount reg set this is the maria's xr or the dr x25 system and that's about the only time i really used in is when i'm in a side mount situation i am kind of a yolk guy but i do like den for side mount so i use den style regs well i want to show you what's actually wrong with this the other night at the pool i was having a lot of difficulty getting the dust cap off of the first stage and i'll see if i can do it here with one hand the reason is is it had so much corrosion in it and if i show you inside you'll see the corrosion there now the dust cap itself is not the problem this corrosion is not from the dust cap the corrosion is actually from the first stage and in short what happened is as i spent a week down in the gulf doing some diving and i was doing some wreck diving down there inside mount and we kind of got in a hurry on our way back and we didn't do a good thorough cleaning job now we just did a video on how to clean your regs and things like that i'll link it up here for you can go watch that if you want to but in short i got complacent i didn't wash it the way that i should have and i simply threw the dust cap back on and i let it set for a couple weeks before i used my reg set again now when i went to go take it off this dust cap would not unscrew and the reason is you can see all the corrosion up in there and that's actually not corrosion that's salt crystals so in short as the salt water was evaporating from my gear over the last few weeks although so salt crystal started to form in there and it actually created a glue that sealed the first stage to the actual dust cap and the only way i could get it off is i had to take two different sets of channel locks put one on the rag one on the dust cap and me and of course one of my other instructors was able to break it free now what i'm going to do today is i'm going to show you just how bad the corrosion or the salt crystallization actually is and then i'm going to show you how i'm going to clean it and then once i get everything done i'll show you the final product and hopefully this will help you understand why it's so very important that you clean your gear and not just after a series of dives i mean clean your deer gear after every single dive make sure you're using fresh clean water some type of gear wash you want to make sure that you don't have that salt crystallization build up and then you want to make sure you dry your gear before you store it as well so without further ado let's jump into this video and i'll show you exactly how i'm going to clean all this out so the first thing i want to do of course is get everything broken apart i'm going to take off the dust cap here again and just see what type of damage i've got here and see what i got to do to repair everything based off how that metal squeaking i'm gonna say there's quite a bit of salt in there and holy cow look at that that is absolutely terrible look at all that salt all right so now that i did that and i've actually already did my other first stage which i'm gonna show you i'm gonna remove all these hoses so i'm just gonna use the uh proper wrench to take it and i'm gonna do a little bit of movie magic here i'm gonna go ahead and take these hoses off and just go and just like that the hoses are taking off and i've actually already broke this down even further i've took all the internal components out as well the last step is i got to take this section of the first stage off and then i can actually clean it now to clean this i'm actually going to be using an ultrasonic cleaner i've got a 50 50 blend of a little bit of cleaner in here and a little bit of water i've got it set to the high setting i am going to be cooking it meaning i've got it turned on hot and then of course once everything's cooked down i'll scrub it down with a brush and get it cleaned off fresh clean water and then more most importantly make sure that it's dry before i start the assembly process but if you ever find yourself in a situation like this where you've got that much corrosion my suggestion to you or not just corrosion but salt buildup take it to a proper gear technician let them service it for you they're going to have the tools and the talents and the skill sets and the knowledge to take everything apart rebuild it if necessary now one good news about this it is time for me to service these regs anyway so i'm going to take it apart i'm going to get it cleaned up get it serviced and then hopefully won't have this issue in the future if i clean it properly now last thing i need to do is take this top part off see if i can get it unscrewed here with one hand just like that and now i can remove this little o-ring here this will pop out and then i can start the cleaning process so simply taking this little o-ring off right here now she'll be able to slide it right out one more o-ring to replace here take it off just like that now essentially what i can do is take all these metal components place it down in the ultrasonic cleaner hit the on button and kind of let it do its thing once that's cleaned off i'm going to brush it and you already see some of that stuff starting to come off once i've got it cleaned off good i'm gonna rinse it down with fresh water take a little brush scrub through it get it cleaned up and then i'm gonna put it back together and make sure i can get it adjusted properly and get everything back in order and we are done and good lord look at the water just how dirty it got now what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna go ahead and pull these components out i'm gonna give them really quick rinse i'm gonna set them over to the side and then of course i'm gonna scrub it down make sure everything's good i'm gonna give it another fresh clean wash in the in the fresh water and then i'm gonna dry it out really good and i'll show you a neat little trick that i do to dry off the components prior to reassembly so the first thing i wanna do and if you ever do this be very careful because this water is extremely hot okay so go ahead and just set it down there give it a little bath like so pull it out and then we'll start the scrubbing process and i've got a ton of parts down in here so i want to make sure i get them all out give it a little fresh clean water there just to cool it off really and i know there's some more in here let's see yep there's two there's one and there's another one just like that somewhere get it down here cool them off a little bit and now what i can do is essentially take my brush here and i can just start scrubbing them down really good make sure i get every little component here scrub down nice and clean get all that salt out of there and then once i get it completed of course i'll put it back into the fresh water as well and make sure everything is nice and clean get it dried off and then start to reassembly process [Music] all right guys now they got everything nice and clean we've got it rinsed out one final time i actually went ahead and changed this water out as well just to get rid of some of the cleaner that was in it that come off that was residual from the cleaning process and to get rid of some of the extra salt that was in there so this is just another uh bottle of fresh water here what i'm gonna do now is just take each component out one by one i've got me a little towel here i'm just gonna lay it down let it kind of drip dry i kind of pat it off but i'll show you a neat little trick that i do as well here in our workshop area i always keep a spare cylinder this is just an old steel 72 just to show you how old this is guys check out the valve on this this valve is actually one of the old tapered valves so it's not sealed with an o-ring it's tapered fitted and it takes pop tape if you will to uh to seal it in there so it's pretty old still 72 it's still and via steel and hydro it's actually still usable we just use it as a shop cylinder here i've got just an old first stage and a low pressure hose and on the end of the low pressure hose i got this little tire filler now this is a tire filler slash air nozzle from xs scuba and the cool thing about that is once you have the air on you can either use this fill up your tires or you can use the air nozzle itself to dry components and that's exactly what we're going to do today with it so i'm going to pull it back over here and i'm just going to take that air nozzle and i can sit here just dry that component out okay flip it over dry the other side now obviously you can use a chamois cloth a towel or something like that as well um but i've got a spare tank of air here so that's exactly what i'm gonna do so i'm gonna take a few minutes make sure everything's good and dried and then we'll get this thing back assembled and just make sure everything's good with it and put it back in service hi guys so now that i've assembled my first stage back i want to go ahead and test the intermediate pressure and the cracking pressure so the intermediate pressure just as a quick recap for you guys basically as tank come or as the air comes out of the tank that's high pressure it's going to go through the high pressure chamber into the low pressure chamber of the first stage that's where it converts from high to low or high pressure to intermediate pressure then as it goes through the hose it's going to come over to the second stage and this is where we deal with cracking pressure now i've got several different ip gauges here that i can use i'm actually going to be using this one for the first stage itself this one i don't really use much other than i use the inline adjustment tool to test or to adjust the breathing pressure or the cracking pressure if you will of the second stage so now that i've got everything here i just want to do a quick little test here and this particular one does have a cold water kit attached to it so i don't want to go above about say um 140 psi if you will or the actual test setting for this one is around 9.4 bar so as i look i can see that it's a little above 9.5 so i can adjust that down a little bit if i need to if i was diving in cold weather right now i definitely take it on the lower spectrum i'm actually leave it up on the higher spectrum right now but i can test the cracking pressure simply by inhaling make sure everything's good there i can adjust it if i need to but effectively i have cleaned the first stage adjusted the first stage after rebuilding the course and dried it out did everything i needed to do and i've reassembled it the last thing i'm going to do is put the cold water kit back on top of here and then i'll kind of give you some final thoughts uh about what the video is about those dust caps and how you can actually take better care of your first stages without getting any type of corrosion or salt buildup like i did all right guys so as you can see got everything reassembled got the cap put back on it and i want to talk about the dust cap really quick for you in this video i'm a firm believer that dust caps are going to help keep debris and things like that out of your first stage however if you don't clean your first stage properly and you don't dry it out properly and i'll show you a little tip on drying it out if you've seen some of our older videos where i talk about all my different reg sets and how i store them i use these little chamois cloths these little microfiber towels here and i can use that to really get in the nooks and crannies regulators and dry things out but more importantly i leave it in my reg bags or my reg boxes and i'll lay the rag on top and that way it's going to draw that moisture out if i didn't happen to get it dry enough it'll draw that moisture out and my reg set won't just be sitting there in all that moisture and causing corrosion things like that but as long as you take good care those dust caps are going to be a godsend for you they will get rid of all the debris and stuff that can get in your first stage when you're storing it but you've got to make sure that they're dried out because if not what can happen obviously is you're going to get a lot of corrosion around them and then of course you're going to be stuck in a position where i was and you're not going to be able to get that dust cap off because i hope you enjoyed today's video if you did give me a big thumbs up definitely share if you got any questions on cleaning rigs how to repair regs things like that drop me a comment down below and i'll try to answer your questions the best i can but guys as always make sure you follow us on instagram and twitter like us on facebook pin us on pinterest subscribe to us here on youtube and as always guys we appreciate your business

Channel: LakeHickoryScuba

Views: 2,359

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: That's One SALTY Regulator, How To Clean Your Scuba Diving Regulator, Corrosion On A Scuba Regulator, Lake Hickory Scuba Center And Marina, Instructor Trainer Bryan Stafford

Id: V6dDh5FqEcU

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020