How To Maintain and Re-Arm Mustang Inflatable Vests

Hi, this is Colleen Becker with Mustang Survival and I'd just like to talk to you about your inflatable vests, how to inspect it, how to make sure that it's armed and prepared and ready to go at all times. So, one of the things that I really think that you should do is maintenance on your vest. So, a couple of things that I would like to show you on this is how to make sure that your cylinder and your bobbin are in good working order and how to inspect your chamber.

So, to . . . I would just like to show quickly on how to inspect the chamber. So, what you'll do is open this part right here and there is a tube right here. When you blow into this tube, it will inflate this vest. Inflate it nice and firm and make sure that this holds air. As long as it holds air, I like to leave it set for about ten minutes just to make sure that it's still firm and then let the air out.

To let the air out, you just turn this cap over, put it right into here and push the air out. When the air is all out, flip it back over, cover it up and fold this back over and you're good to go. You'll know that your vest will now hold air. So, a lot of people ask me, how do I know if my . . . when my cylinder or my thing needs to be changed? So, I like to show them this way.

To get to your . . . to where everything is, your bobbin and your cylinder will go in here. Make sure that your manual pull is not in here so that it's coming out of the way. Reach down in here, grab the whole mechanism with your hand and pull it up here where you can see it. Once you have it up here where you can see it, I always like to make sure that I take the CO2 cylinder off first to make sure that it's not going to inflate on me. So, I take that off, set it aside and then your bobbin is in here. So, you open this up and here's your bobbin.

So, if you can see on here, there's some ribbed substance in here. So, if that is ribbed and it's in good condition, you're welcome to put this back in and continue to use this. If for any reason this is . . . looks like it's starting to dissolve or the ribs are flattened out, this needs to be replaced. So, if you need to replace it, you can get a rearm kit that looks like this from your local retailer. Then you take this kit and I'm going to put this back in because mine was in good working condition. This bobbin can only go in one direction. You cannot put it in incorrectly and it will line up and when it does, it will just fall right into place, just like that.

You take your cover and put it back on and screw it down just until it stops turning, just to snug. Once it's there, you grab your CO2 cylinder, lift up on this little yellow spring part here, push this down in here and turn it a quarter turn and now this is armed and ready to go. It's green right here to show that it's armed. Push this right back into place, hold down your manual tab and put that back into place just like that. Lay this nice and flat, fold this over like this and now you know that you are all set, armed and ready to go for this season. Thank you.