Feedback on tank positioning.

[kr2y5]

Here we go again. I was definitely feeling more comfortable today. Main tanks don't bother me. Deco bottle is still dangling, need to do something with the lower attachment. Maybe a tighter bungee?

Here's what I did with the main tank. Shortened the lower attachments by 2 inches as we have discussed, it's basically almost 0-length now. The tanks are harder to put on, but doable. Moved the tank bands up by 1.5 inches or so to compensate for shortening the attachments. Valves are still facing out, and the attachment is about 1 inch towards the back of the valve (towards the rails).

New_main_tank

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

Here's what I did with the deco bottle. Lower attachment on a 6-inch bungee, moved the attachment up to be positioned about 1.5 inches above the main tank bands, as per Andy's suggestion. The neck bungee is like in the Jill Heinerth / Jeff Loflin video, on a short bungee with quick links.

New_deco_bottle

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_lower_bungee

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_neck_bungee

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

I kept the extra left-side bungee to see the difference. Without the bungee, front of the tank hangs quite a bit.

New_bottle-before-bungee

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

After looping the bungee around the valve, front is snug, the bottom hangs, although not as badly as before.

New_bottle-1

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_bottle-2

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_bottle-3

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_bottle-4

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_bottle-5

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

Here's the left side without the deco bottle:

New_left-5

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_left-4

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_left-3

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_left-2

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_left-1

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

Here's the right side:

New_right-1

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_right-2

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_right-3

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

New_right-4

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

Here's the position of the SPGs:

New_spg

• kr2y5
• Jun 11, 2016

What do you think?

 

[tbone1004]

I wouldn't argue with the tank positioning at this point. If it's comfortable and working for you, I'd leave it where it is.

Regarding the deco bottle, I'd ditch the quick links and just use a prusik loop with the bolt snap. It will work fine. The bottom attachment point has to be shortened to be as short as it can be with you still being able to attach it. It isn't bad, and with a full tank it is hanging about where it would be expected. I'd still try only filling it to around 2200psi and seeing if it hangs better. As long as that is sufficient O2, your valve/regulator will be happy with you and the butt should float up.

You do need to fix your bolt snap on your primary as that is hanging way too low and will catch on something at some point. Do this, it's brilliant. It isn't a breakaway attachment, but neither is tying the primary with cave line and this has the advantage of actually preventing that second stage from dangling. All of my second stages have this on them

 

[kr2y5]

Thanks, Tbone. With respect to deco bottle, it seems that the length of the snap-bolt, which needs to be at least 3.5 inches for me to be able to handle it in gloves, will always limit how tightly I can wedge the deco bottle against the main tank with any solution that involves clipping the bolt snap to the hip D-ring.

So, how about the following:
- Move my left waist D-ring to just about the top of my hip bone, have another left waist D-ring closer to the front.
- Keep a bungee on the bottom attachment on the deco bottle.
- With the bottle under the main tank, thread the bolt snap with that bungee through the rear left waist D-ring.
- Pull that bolt snap back towards the front, and clip it to the left front waist D-ring.

That would be, essentially, just like Rob's method of mounting stage on top (and dropping a bolt snap between tank and body to clip it in the front), except in this case, bottle would be on the bottom, with the rear waist D-ring playing the role of a pulley, so to speak. It would seem that I should be able to wedge the deco bottle against the main tank as tight as I want. Is there something wrong with it? I'd assume someone must have explored that option already, and they must have not liked it for some reason or other. If not, I'm planning to try that out on the next dive.

Thoughts?

 

[tbone1004]

too much junk in there in my opinion. It isn't hanging low enough that it is terribly offensive.You are correct that the use of large bolt snaps severely limits how close the bottles will be unless you play to the buoyancy advantages, in this case I would try to only have the 40 filled to around 2000psi and see what happens. This is good for roughly 20 minutes of deco which is enough for most diving. The other option is to top mount the 40 which I wouldn't necessarily deem ideal, but may be worth trying. You don't have to worry as much about the profile there since it is riding up top while full so should lay flat. It will float up while you're on deco, but you'll still look better than Loflin, so pick and choose your battles.

The other option I just thought of that may work is to put the deco bottle on the right, following right rich principal of staged gasses *I hate GUE's all bottles on the left approach fwiw, I get it, I just don't agree with it, and their rationale doesn't apply in sidemount, so there's that*. If you put it on a fairly long bungee, say 10" including the length of the bolt snap, maybe 12, so give yourself some room to adjust, and clip the deco bottle on first to the rail, then put your main bottle on over it, that might work well. Not sure, never tried it, and wouldn't work for me since we drop our O2 bottles, but at the same time, I don't care what my O2 bottle looks like because it's getting dropped anyway

 

[kr2y5]

Changes:
- installed 9-inch HP hoses on main tanks, swapped tanks for outlets facing up, HP hoses alongside tanks
- shortened the bottom deco bottle bungee to about 1 inch (about the same position on the tank)
- ditched the quicklink on the neck attachment
- installed an extra left-side D-ring on the hip for the deco bottle

Outcome:
- no more lolipops crowding the chest area, which is great, and checking gas seems doable even with the deco bottle getting in the way, but I definitely would not have been able to do this with 6-inch HP hoses without getting the backgas tanks out of the bungee
- gauges are dangling now on the side of the tanks, maybe I need to keep them tucked in underneath the bands
- shortening the bottom bungee just pushed the bottle forward by a good 6-inches, the front bungee is pulling it away with the back gas tank playing the role of a fulcrum, maybe I should have moved the bottom attachment point up by 6 inches as well to compensate
- clipping bottom bottle attachment to waist D-ring is doable, but takes a bit of effort

Sorry for the bad quality, the vis was no good today.

New_left-with-bottle.png

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

New_left-with-bottle-2.png

• kr2y5
• Jun 17, 2016

New_IMG_20160616_202037

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

New_IMG_20160616_201302

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

New_IMG_20160616_201709

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

New_IMG_20160616_201724

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

New_IMG_20160616_201815

• kr2y5
• Jun 16, 2016

The primary bolt snap on a bungee works great.

 

[tbone1004]

I would invert put the bottom bungee on the deco bottle facing up instead of down. That combined with raising it to where the two attachment points on the bottle are the same distance apart or shorter than the attachment points on the harness. This will help pull it down towards your waist which is good.

not much you can do about spg's other than trying to push them in towards your body on the other side of the tank so they're not sticking out. Let them fall into you instead of away from you

 

[Doby45]

I kid, I kid. LOL

 

[kr2y5]

I kid, I kid. LOL

No, that's good catch, man, I might have not noticed myself how badly it dangles were it not for the pictures... the boltsnap-on-a-bungee trick in #42 takes care of it.

I would invert put the bottom bungee on the deco bottle facing up instead of down. That combined with raising it to where the two attachment points on the bottle are the same distance apart or shorter than the attachment points on the harness. This will help pull it down towards your waist which is good.

not much you can do about spg's other than trying to push them in towards your body on the other side of the tank so they're not sticking out. Let them fall into you instead of away from you

Thanks, bro. By the way, it's a bit puzzling to me why tank bottoms went up. I did have to re-install bottom attachments as the left tank has become right and vice versa, but I could swear I have them exactly the same way relative to the valve stem and rails.

I'm guessing this has something to do with the valve knobs on HOG regs being slightly slanted: when the tanks get flipped, the place where the bungee is pulling goes down by maybe half an inch, which presumably causes the tanks to rotate more inwards, and the lower attachments are effectively getting shorter (?). I'm surprised that half an inch would matter so much, but maybe it does. I'm planning to rotate the lower attachments an inch or so towards the outlet (i.e., towards the rails) to mitigate this, and see if that brings the tanks back closer to horizontal as they were, unless you think that's a bad plan.

Left-without-bottle

• kr2y5
• Jun 17, 2016

Before-and-after

• kr2y5
• Jun 17, 2016

 

[Doby45]

I am actually going to do the exact same thing with my regs. I read the solution from tbone too. I like stuff nice and tight and streamlined..

 

[tbone1004]

rotate the lower bands up, that will drop them down again. I'd probably go to about 45* off of the valve stem. The bungee is basically rotating the tank up and into you which is causing the lower part of the tank to raise so you hit that on the money.