How to... - various repair instructions for CO2 motors

[g_kandylakis]

Over time I have bought plenty of CO2 motors through eBay, most of them, especially the old ones, already used and in some cases damaged. But not beyond repair.

The msost common fault was broken gas pipes, leaking filling valves and leaks in general.

Also, a lot were rather dirty and needed a thorough disassembly and clean-up.

Some of the steps I found useful, I documented and posted on the fb group, I am posting them again here, plus any more that might come.

[g_kandylakis]

Starting with the Brown motors.

Bill Brown had developed from very early a system of cylinder rotation for throttle control, that would not strain the end of the copper tubing to the cylinder head. No soldering, just a small flange formed on the end to take the pressure. And a piece some kind of rubber to seal the gas.

This he started in early 1980s with the A-23, probably the most successful of his motors, and from then on on all his subsequent motors.

Well, either the tubing was broken and needed replacement, or the seal material had disintegrated, in any case it was necessary to cut the tubing end and thus lose the flange.

A seal can easily be made using O-ring cord, which comes in various diameters, suitable for the various cylinder heads.

To forme a flange, without any specialized equipment, was another thing...

After some experimenting I came up with a rather simple solution which works.

Described in the following six attachments.

[g_kandylakis]

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[g_kandylakis]

In a similar direction, it was easy to make some interessting modifications, now that the flange shaping was solved.

Before the A-23, his other motors als had a soldered tubing-cylinder head assembly.
He did take some action to remove the strain by rotating the tubing to the cylinder a couple of turns, on the MJ70-140.

However, it proved to be rather easy to modify these and the 0,005" to the more modern system of stress-free cylinder rotation.

[g_kandylakis]

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Another most useful modification became a necessity with time. Having a lot of Brown motors of the earlier years (70s-80s), meant that they were all equipped with a 1/16" filling nozzle, suitable with the corresponding charger off those years.

At some point Bill Brown switched to 2,0mm nozzles, same as Gasparin, Telco and Shark and their chargers, plus the popular Sodastream adapters.

You can still charge 1,6mm nozzles but there is a lot of gas leaking out in the proccess.

So, a very simple solution was found, to increase the diameter of the filling nozzle from 1,6 to 2,0. This is a complete risk-free operation as there is no material or strength loss, just a tighter fit to the charger.

Details follow, pictures should be self-explanatory as well...

[g_kandylakis]

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And last useful item, the plug inside the illing valve of Brown motors.

As it turnes out, these plugs were made of a material that disintegrated and eventually became gummy and useless, rendering many motors out of order.

To change it is nothing difficult. All you need is some O-ring cord, cut in lengths and sanded round on one end.

"Sanded" is easier said than done, because the material is rubber. It can be sanded however if it is wet, so add water to it and to the sandpaper and you can work on it.

The other end needs to be cut at an angle to allow the gas flow while charging. If left flat, it will block the entrance of the gas to the tubing.

And that is all it takes...

[g_kandylakis]

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