Weakling needs tips for torque

[Akimbo]

If you send me the airline tickets I could bring my vise and wrenches!! I would love to dive Pooh- Ket.

I can up that ante. I bid trading a new Scuba Tools vise and a first stage for the ticket.

 

[gcarter]

+1 on the vise. Most sensible answer for a first step, and also safer for both you and the reg. As to the boot "trick", if you do not want to use a vise, a strap wrench is still a better and safer solution than this.

Cheater bars should never be used except as a last resort. They are generally unsafe, and carry risk of damage to more expensive tools and parts.

A better solution for loosening is to use a breaker bar. They are available in ratcheting and non-ratcheting versions, in greater lengths than a typical torque wrench. You should not need anything other than your torque wrench for tightening at those torque levels if you are using a vise.

YMMV

 

[herman]

A couple of other tidbits come to mind as I read the last page or 2. First off, DO NOT put the reg itself in a vise unless you have soft jaws or some other way of protecting it. Use the reg holding tool you have, screw it securely into the reg and then clamp the tool in the vise with as little of the tool sticking out of the vise as possible. Chewing up the finish on the tool is one thing, that is what it's for, distroying the chrome on a reg is a totally different matter and you will mess it up if you put it in a vise by itself. If you are going to service regulators, you need a vise.

The next thing is when removing the yoke nuts there is no need for the torque wrench and frankly a good pull bar is much better, easier to put a cheater on, is less likely to damage the reg and you will not damage an expensive torque wrench. Use the torque wrench when installing the yoke, there is no need for it when you remove it. The amount of torque needed to remove it is going to be whatever it is, there is no need to measure it.

 

[Quero]

Quero, I was kidding about the air wrench and the dynamite (I think you use that for fishing!)

You were kidding? Really? Good thing you cleared that up for me! :biggrin3:
Oh, and I heard that dynamite was for duck hunting.

....congratulations for working on your own gear and there's certainly nothing gender specific about doing so. You do really need the vise, or it will be much more difficult to apply accurate torque anyway. What kind of reg is it? 266in/lbs sounds like a SP spec, and there are a few of us around here with way too much familiarity with working on SP regs. We'd be happy to bombard with all sorts unsolicited and probably unnecessary advice.

As for gender specificity, I would be willing to wager that there's quite probably a strong statistical relationship between gender and willingness to work on one's own regs--if SB polls were actually representative of the diving public it might make an interesting thread, but we all know that SBers who answer polls are a self-selected group, so the resulting stats are meaningless. I believe that in some ways I'm absolutely typical of most women--my lack of background in practical mechanics, and absolutely atypical in others--I actually got the technician's training (the only woman to do so at the [yes ScubaPro] factory-sponsored course that year sponsored by Thailand's biggest SP distributor, Dive Supply. But that doesn't matter. It's not necessary to be male or a mechanical genius to service regs--even those of us with little or no background (in either field) can do it if we follow the manuals and schematics.

I've done a bunch of regs, and my biggest difficulty is always arm strength, which I usually delegate to whatever DMT is around at the time! Isn't that what DMTs are for? Doing grunt work, LOL? Joke's on me, I guess, now that I don't have one around.... (shortdivemedic, we talked about you coming for DM training here, so what do you say? ready to come? Say today?)

But anyway, I'll be sure to come back to this very thread to access the collective wisdom of my new tutoring team if I have any random questions! Thanks!

 

[Quero]

A couple of other tidbits come to mind as I read the last page or 2. First off, DO NOT put the reg itself in a vise unless you have soft jaws or some other way of protecting it. Use the reg holding tool you have, screw it securely into the reg and then clamp the tool in the vise with as little of the tool sticking out of the vise as possible. Chewing up the finish on the tool is one thing, that is what it's for, distroying the chrome on a reg is a totally different matter and you will mess it up if you put it in a vise by itself. If you are going to service regulators, you need a vise.

The next thing is when removing the yoke nuts there is no need for the torque wrench and frankly a good pull bar is much better, easier to put a cheater on, is less likely to damage the reg and you will not damage an expensive torque wrench. Use the torque wrench when installing the yoke, there is no need for it when you remove it. The amount of torque needed to remove it is going to be whatever it is, there is no need to measure it.

Thanks for the advice, and yeah, I agree with both of your points. The reason I don't yet have a vise is exactly that I was taught to do it manually in order not to inadvertently damage the reg by putting it in a vise. Thus my thread here trying to find a non-vise way to do it. And as for the uses of the torque wrench, in fact, I have a socket wrench I use to (try to) loosen the yoke nut. The torque wrench is only to (try to) tighten it back on after servicing the reg.

With the clarity that the light of day brings here on Pooh-Ket, I've decided to grab a man for help with the yoke nut--at least for today--while I search for the perfect vise. We don't have ScubaToys here, and I'm not sure I want to bolt a vise to my butcher-block table (which substitutes as a workbench at reg servicing time) anyway.

 

[SC_Hoaty]

... I've decided to grab a man for help with the yoke nut....

That can be taken out of context almost as much as Phuket!

Glad you have a variety of solutions for the next time!

 

[Bubbletrubble]

With the clarity that the light of day brings here on Pooh-Ket, I've decided to grab a man for help with the yoke nut--at least for today--while I search for the perfect vise. We don't have ScubaToys here, and I'm not sure I want to bolt a vise to my butcher-block table (which substitutes as a workbench at reg servicing time) anyway.

There are lots of vises out there which can be clamped temporarily to the edge of a table. No need for bolt-mounting at all, although the permanently bolted down ones are obviously more stable. I borrow a clamp-mounted vise from a dive buddy whenever it's time to do a first stage overhaul (just in case the Zung Boot method doesn't cut it). Works well enough, in my opinion.

It sounds like a clamp-mounted vise would be more suitable for your application. You could then store the vise elsewhere on the days when you aren't monkeying around with reg servicing. Something to consider...

 

[Quero]

That can be taken out of context almost as much as Phuket!

Glad you have a variety of solutions for the next time!

Yep! This is the eyelash-batting-cleavage-showing option.... :gr1:

 

[redacted]

There are lots of vices out there which can be clamped temporarily to the edge of a table. No need for bolt-mounting at all, although the permanently bolted down ones are obviously more stable. I borrow a clamp-mounted vice from a dive buddy whenever it's time to do a first stage overhaul (just in case the Zung Boot method doesn't cut it). Works well enough, in my opinion.

It sounds like a clamp-mounted vice would be more suitable for your application. You could then store the vice elsewhere on the days when you aren't monkeying around with reg servicing. Something to consider...

Mine is mounted on a piece of wood that I set on my chair and sit on when I use it. I wrap the reg in newspaper to protect the finish and loosely set it in the vise, tightening it just enough to hold it in place. Don't clamp down or you could distort the brass.

I have never been able to loosen a properly torqued retainer with the 1st stage held in my hand.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Mine is mounted on a piece of wood that I set on my chair and sit on when I use it. I wrap the reg in newspaper to protect the finish and loosely set it in the vise, tightening it just enough to hold it in place.

Do you straddle or ride side-saddle?
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Great suggestion, by the way.