How to add weight pouches to my rEvo?

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stuartv

Seeking the Light
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I have a rEvo III Mini (stainless). It has a Don Six stand on it. I.e.:

products

I'm diving it with 3l steels.

In the ocean, in a 5mm wetsuit, I don't need any weight at all and I get good trim.

In fresh water, in my drysuit with thickest undies, 6# of lead is enough. I may find I can use even less, but 6 seems pretty minimal, really, for having a drysuit and thick undies.... Anyway...

I'm guessing I may need 10 or so when I get in salt water with my drysuit and thick undies. Or could be a little more. We'll see.

So far, to add weight to my unit, I used hose clamps to mount trim weight pouches on the outsides of my cylinders. I intended this to be temporary, just until I figure out how much weight I need and where I need it. Like so:

revoTrimWeights.jpg


I also found that with the weight in those pouches (2 x 2# in the lower pockets and 2 x 1# in the upper), I was a bit head heavy. I tried it first with my Deep6 fins. I could get down, so it was enough weight, but when I would get still, I was going head down. I switched to my Hollis F1 fins and then my trim seemed to be okay.

Now that I have an idea of how much and an inkling of where, I want to figure out a permanent solution for holding my weights.

I don't want to mount actual lead, because I don't want to have it there when I dive wet. And I don't want to need to carry lead if I fly somewhere with my rEvo. I would like to mount the weight pouches that I am using somewhere, so that I can just put weight in when I need it. I would also rather have the pouches mounted on the unit and not the cylinders, as I have 2 sets of cylinders and plan to get 1 more. Also, I would like to have at least a pair of pouches lower down on the unit so that I might be able to achieve good trim while using my Deep6 fins (which are neutral).

A final mention: The normal rEvo thing seems to be weight in the rEvo weight pouch that affixes to the shelf at the top of the unit. I don't want to put weight up high like that. I need it down lower. Also, my unit has a Shearwater HUD and the black box for the HUD is mounted there on that top shelf. And, I can't figure out any other good place to mount that black box anyway.

Anybody have any suggestions?

What I was thinking about is cutting down a cutting board (or other sturdy piece of plastic) and mounting it inside the stand. Then semi-permanently affixing trim weight pouches to that. The pouches and weight would be sort of "inside" the stand. But, these pouches only hold 4# each, max. So, I would probably need 4 pouches, total. And I probably don't want ALL my weight there in the stand. That might make it where I am foot heavy and neutral fins aren't enough to fix it. Thus I am still left trying to figure out the best way to mount 2 weight pouches somewhere around the middle of the unit.

I wouldn't be too bothered if my final solution ended up leaving a pair of trim weight pouches on the cylinders, like I have them now. The pouches aren't that expensive, so buying one pair for each set of cylinders is not a big deal to me. But, if there were some kind of "tank strap" that was the right size to go around 3l steels, and I could use that to hold the trim weight pouches on the cylinder, and thus, easily move the weight pouches from cylinder to cylinder, that would be cool too - if the strap were thin enough to fit between the cylinder and the fixation (which I doubt, so that's probably not an option).

Thank you for your thoughts.
 
You can always stuff a 4lb soft weight opposite the battery box under the scrubber cover. I am not sure if a bigger weight would fit, but I know 4lb does
 
Clip on ankle weights can be handy for places nothing else fits. Maybe they would be useful to you somehow. For instance clipping a 1 1/2 lb weight on the back D ring can level light feet. Also, you are right that stand seems a good place to hide some weight, and what you have now is not bad.
 
You can always stuff a 4lb soft weight opposite the battery box under the scrubber cover. I am not sure if a bigger weight would fit, but I know 4lb does
I stuff a 5lb soft weight in there.
 
I'm not a revo diver, but how are you running your bailout? Single al80? Depending on the type of diving your doing you could maybe consider sidemounting steel tanks (even 50s).
 
I don't know what the rEvo backplate is like, but when I dive the JJ in cold water with a dry suit, I just put an extra steel backplate on. Only thing you need to change is possibly longer bolts. Perfect ballast right at the center of mass...
 
I'm not a revo diver, but how are you running your bailout? Single al80? Depending on the type of diving your doing you could maybe consider sidemounting steel tanks (even 50s).

A single 40 or a 40 and an AL80, depending on the dive.

But, I would not feel comfortable with using BO bottles as required ballast. At least, not for that much ballast. If I had to take off my BO for some reason (e.g. giving it to a buddy who has had a CO2 hit and burned through all his BO while we're still making an emergency exit), I don't want to cork.

Maybe when I am more experienced that option will make more sense to me?

I don't know what the rEvo backplate is like, but when I dive the JJ in cold water with a dry suit, I just put an extra steel backplate on. Only thing you need to change is possibly longer bolts. Perfect ballast right at the center of mass...

Part of my objective is to NOT have to use tools and make big changes to switch between diving wet and dry. That could mean switching back and forth every week. Plus it means carrying that SS BP with me if I fly somewhere to dive in cold water (e.g. Scapa, where I'm hoping to go in Sept).

That's why I like attaching weigh pockets.

I have an idea for fabbing something that will do exactly what I want. If it works out, I'll post it, for sure.

In the meantime, 2 weight pouches on my cylinders and stuffing a 4 or 5 # soft weight in the middle (thanks, @Dsix36 and @Slamfire) is probably going to be my interim solution.

Don or Slamfire, what do you do with that soft weight? Stuff it in with a zip tie to hold it up against the center bolt that the cover attaches to?
 
You could put a weight pouch behind the lower backplate on each side where the webbing gets woven through.
 
Using your BO as part of your weighting seems like a problem waiting to happen. If you have to hand off the BO bottle to your buddy you will become positively buoyant.

I'm not a revo diver, but how are you running your bailout? Single al80? Depending on the type of diving your doing you could maybe consider sidemounting steel tanks (even 50s).
 
Using your BO as part of your weighting seems like a problem waiting to happen. If you have to hand off the BO bottle to your buddy you will become positively buoyant.

To each his own. I think the grand majority of florida cave rebreather divers and instructors would disagree. Most of us are diving steel 85s or bigger. I don't plan to hand off a steel BO bottle.
 

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