My Royal Mistral
- I've been keeping an eye out for a good deal on a Royal Mistral with a high pressure port. I found one being sold for $250. I offered $200 and the seller accepted. It looked pretty rough but I thought it was coming from Monaco, which is where Jacques Cousteau headed the museum and headquartered his Calypso and diving exploits. So YES... I hoped it was one of JYK's personal regs... At least I could pretend...
- So, then I get this package from Morocco (not Monaco) with cyrillic writing all over it. I opened it up and it was my Royal Mistral...
- Actually it looked worse than it was... The label was eaten up pretty bad with corrosion. Then to add icing to the cake, the seller had wrapped tape around the regulator and when I took off the tape, it lifted a bunch more of the paint off the label. BUT... It was a Royal Mistral with an HP port and I got a darned good deal on it!
- I showed it to my buddy Ron SheriffDiver and he said he had one of the last replacement labels from Allen. So, I opened it up and found the mechanism intact but poorly adjusted... Actually it was loose. Some diluted vinegar and scrubbing with an old toothbrush got the corrosion and verdigris cleaned up pretty good. The corrosion had lifted some of the chrome plating so it didn't clean up perfect. But it still looks decent. It had a deep scratch in the volcano orifice which I was able to polish out.
- Interestingly, the high pressure seat was dark colored... Which I took to be degradation of the surface and proceeded to attempt a re-facing with flat sand paper in progressively finer grades. This got me down to where I sanded through the dark color directly into brass... There actually was no seat. The volcano orifice was resting directly on bare brass metal! So, I had to replace that seat with one of my parts bin leftovers.
- So now, with a working high pressure seat, polished volcano orifice, and correctly attached and adjusted lever... This thing works perfectly! And with my new lable from SheriffDiver Ron, it looks pretty darn beautiful!
- I finished it up with a used USD hose loop and curved mouthpiece... Just because it was already put together. I haven't had a chance to dive it yet, but it will definitely get some use this Spring. Meantime, I'm on the lookout for a pressure gauge that will fit the Royal Mistral HP port.