Update on the Scuba Compressor Rebuild

A few people have emailed me and asked about my progress on rebuilding the compressor. Winter is upon us here in paradise valley and I have nothing but time on my hands. I hate to admit it, but I’ve been procrastinating on getting the compressor up and running. Since I won’t be doing much diving until March, I’ve got plenty of time. But I’m not going to wait until the last minute to work on it. I’ve already got some work done already.

For those of you that think it is really cool to own your own scuba compressor, let me be the first to point out how insane you are. Owning a compressor is hard work and won’t save you any money. So why do I own one you ask? Simple, I can get fills when ever I want. No more modifying my schedule so I can drive to a dive store for my fills. I also have control over the filling of my tanks. I got sick of seeing the kid at the dive store blast pure oxygen in my tanks at 500 psi per minute.

My Progress

So here is what I’ve gotten done so far. My dad came over for a visit one weekend and helped me get all of the tubing disconnected from all of the heads. Since then I have taken apart and cleaned all of the heads and valve assemblies. I have also completely rebuilt all of the pistons, that’s new expansion and rider rings.

On the valve stop for the second stage head, I noticed that there is significant pitting going on. So I have to order a new valve stop. I’m also going to order some new hex plugs that hold the valve assemblies in the heads. The ones on there now are OK, but have standard o-rings. That’s fine if I’m only pumping less than 3,5000 psi. With the bank bottles, I plan on pumping up to 4,000 psi. So those o-rings need to be replace with harder, more durable, Teflon rings around the bolt.

So that’s where I’m at. The first and third stages have been rebuilt. I’m waiting for UPS to deliver the parts I need to finish putting everything together. Once I get everything assembled, then the fun begins leak testing everything.