Gas cylinder for Zodiac liferaft

[magique]

I have a 2006 Zodiac 4 person offshore Solas liferaft. Had a difficult time finding a service dealer here in the Caribbean ,have been looking for the past four years. Currently in Curaçao ,no dealer here either or any islands nearby. I am looking to purchase a Co2 gas cylinder for the raft ,needs to be CO2 2.200kg
N2. 0.140kg full weight 8.201kg . Raft was manufactured 2006. Tried a dealer in Miami ,would not sell the canister to me. Any ideas or suggestions out there ?

[brutb]

Have you tried a paint ball dealer?????

[lonesoldier0408]

Originally Posted by brutb

Have you tried a paint ball dealer?????

Great "Out of the box," process. That resourcefulness is great for the budget. Would be great to be able to re-charge.

[belizesailor]

If you find a suitable tank you may have difficulty getting it filled with the CO2/N2 mix. Ive tried to repurpose tanks before and found industrial gas distributors unwilling to fill them with my requested mix (not without good reason...could lead to some ugly mistakes).

[liferaft]

Here is a link to the Zodiac service stations worldwide.

Finding a cylinder and someone to fill it will be darn near impossible. Service stations (such as myself) are not allowed to sell spare parts unless they are fitted to a raft we have serviced.

The valve that Zodiac uses has a unique pitch to the threads and there are items like the piercing disc that must be replaced. This is not a do it yourself job.

I hope the list of service stations helps.

[Nicholson58]

I gave up trying to refill mine for AVON. All service places are priced to sell you a new raft. They won't touch the bottle if you bring it to them. The claim is liability etc. Even our welding gas suppliers won't touch it. Lawyers will be the death of us. I finally figured out the hoses & fittings and will fill it in our shop using a precision scale and N2 & CO2 bottles myself. Its good to have your own world class machine & welding shop.

[liferaft]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

I gave up trying to refill mine for AVON. All service places are priced to sell you a new raft. They won't touch the bottle if you bring it to them. The claim is liability etc. Even our welding gas suppliers won't touch it. Lawyers will be the death of us. I finally figured out the hoses & fittings and will fill it in our shop using a precision scale and N2 & CO2 bottles myself. Its good to have your own world class machine & welding shop.

Just make sure that it doesn't leak. There is a reason the internal valve parts need to be replaced. An empty cylinder doesn't do anyone any good.

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by liferaft

Just make sure that it doesn't leak. There is a reason the internal valve parts need to be replaced. An empty cylinder doesn't do anyone any good.

Point taken - thanks.

The bottle was 1/4 full when I performed the inspection. (new to us yacht). The raft passed pressure tests in the living room. Cleaned & rinsed in the pool. I replaced the antique emergency lights with 3 redundant SOLAS LI battery systems etc. Way better than original. It holds inflated for 7 days without re-fill. Lots of other stores were total junk - also replaced.

Found the bottle valve was leaking at the bottle to valve threads. Fixed it. I will refill and then delay a season so I can monitor the bottle weight. We don't really need the raft on Lake Michigan. I will feel good about it when we head out the St Lawrence. SO far, everything that I found wrong was a bad decision or job inadequately performed by someone we were supposed to trust.

Raft packing and EPIRB maintenance are pet peeves. We can build a yacht, campaign it around the world, provision it, rebuild the engines, electrical systems, communications, WIFI, computers etc. but somehow, we are too stupid to stuff a rubber boat in a box or inspect the batteries in an EPIRB. What we need is more micro-managing of our lives. I could go on.