Paintball Air Tank Maintenance

Video Transcript

"Hello this is Rob Rubin and you're watching Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about air tank maintenance. There is really not a lot you need to do as an end user on your own air tank. For example you don't have to take the regulator apart yourself. Unless you know what you are doing, do not take this apart. Some different regulators require some maintenance if you have moving parts on them like such but for the most part air tanks are pretty much leave it be because unless you know what you are doing you can really hurt yourself. There is one part of maintenance that you can do and that requires you checking the tank visually. By law every air tank that is made has to have a date stamp on it. The date stamp tells you when this tank was created. Fiber tanks have to be tested every three to five years depending on the make of the tank itself. Steel tanks must be tested every five years. If your tank is out of date, your paintball field cannot by law fill this tank. For example, this tank was made in the year 2000, that means this tank is out of date. This tank was made in the year 2003 which means that it is currently still in date although this is going to need to be rehydrotested very soon. You can rehydrotest tanks. For example this is an old steel tank that I have and as you can see there is a new stamp date on it but it is your responsibility as a player to check the dates on it and to know if it is in or out of date because if you get to the field and the guy looks at the air tank and it is out of date he is not going to fill it for you no matter how much you beg and plead for him to do so. You're not worth the fine, trust me. When you are inspecting your tanks at home the biggest thing you can check is the O ring on the top here. The O ring is what makes a seal between the air tank and your paintball marker. You want to make sure that the O Ring is whole. You don't want it to be cracked or it is not dried out and if you need to replace it always have a whole bunch of spares. You should have this in your kit anyway because you can never have enough O rings. There is one thing I do want to talk about and that is on the fill nipple, this little piece right here. Never under any certain circumstances get oil in or around this fill nipple. Don't even make excuses, just don't do it. The reason is when you have got high pressure air attached to this through whatever you are using to fill it with bad things happen with oil and high pressure air. A lot of friction goes on in there. Very bad things so keep the nipple protected and keep it dry. Also after playing you just want to visually inspect your tank, make sure there are no scars or scrapes on it, no physical bad damage to the tank. The reason is that it is a high pressure air tank, you don't really want to have a breech in your high pressure air tank. Then after you are done you get a thread saver like this and put it on the top because you don't want your threads to get damaged. If you drop the air tank on the threads it won't get a good seal and that's not good and it is just bad for the air tank. So put the thread saver on there and then put the tank away. "