Thinking of drilling out my autoseal!

[mushrat]

I have a 4 hose autoseal hookah. Its lovely to look at, delightful to smoke, great at parties....and smoking off the auto-seal hoses is a bitch.
I have a "master" socket that doesn't have an autoseal, stright shot into the body. Hits smooth and easy. The other 3 have autoseal. My friends have all commented on hw hard it can be to draw, espcially compared to when I let them try my hose. I've experimented with remving the bearing, and this helps some, but there is still the fact that the autoseal socket has 3 smaller holes to make it easier for the bearing to block the connection. This still restricts airflow to a noticible level. Im using nice wide mya hoses so thats not it.
Im considering drilling out the socket opposite the master hose and going to a nice cork when not using it. I realise this will be a non-reversable experiment, but I think it may be worth it for smoking enjoyment of my friends.
What do you all think?

[Lakemonster]

Hey........
There are a couple things I would try before commiting yourself entirely.
1. Try drilling a couple more small holes in the hose connector make it like 4 or 5 holes instead of three. See if that works any better.
2. Widen the orifice under the bearing by drilling it out to slightly larger diameter. Replace the bearing to the appropriate size.
 

[ahwahoo2006]

or just drill one.... you'd still have 2 good ones left....  but thats just me, Im more of the cut first, fix it later type

[Lakemonster]

Tell you what.....
I just did that to mine to see what kind of difference it makes.
I used what appears to be a 3/32 drill bit and made a fourth hole in the center of the connection......
I then used the same bit and walked it around the inside of the of the orifice and widened it out a "C" hair.
Upon testing.... I would say the detectable improvement is near 33%

[Soup]

I, admitantly, know nothing about auto-seal stems.  I assume that the bearings are metal and if that is indeed the case, you could replace them with a ball of lighter material such as plastic in addition to making the airway larger.  This would, I believe, make the draw much better.
Just a thought.

[Lakemonster]

Someone mentioned using airsoft pellets not long ago..... still meaing to try that.

[mushrat]

lake: red,blond,or black?
The ball still gets decent seal or did you have to increase the size?
Thanks for the actual field test btw!

[Soup]

I remember hearing about that and was surprised to find that it has not been stated here.

[mushrat]

soup: I took the ball out of one socket completely, and it still draws very hard.
If i do some drilling, its going to be on one socket opposite the Master socket, one most likely to be used with only a second smoker.
 

[Lakemonster]

[quote]lake: red,blond,or black?[/quote]
Um. you lost me.... in reference to?
As for the bearing, Im still using steel BB's. No, I didnt ream out the hole that much bigger at all.... so the BB still works.
In all reality. I would find a few drill bits that are under the size of your bearing and work your way up instead of walking a bit around to ream it out. The way I did it could make the seating non-concentric, and the bearing might not sit flush all the way around....giving you a small leak.

[Soup]

Just a question, mush, what model of autoseal are you using and where did you buy it?  I've been looking into getting the Glyph 3 hose from H-S which is an autoseal.

[zzzzzT]

I would go for it and enlarge the hole. I have a beautiful Syrian
hookah with autoseal and the draw is much to tight with the hole
size.  I enlarged the hole and it works like a dream.  The
autoseal does not work anymore now that I enlarged the holes and I
tried a larger ball bearing and it clogged the  port so you do
tend to lose autoseal from enlarging the hole to a comfortable size. I
only did this to one of my hose connectors so the others would stay
shut and I would have the option to clear smoke from the chamber. I
don't see the point of autoseal if you get a annoying tight draw. I
would enlarge them, I  don't like smoking with such a tight draw.

[mushrat]

Lake: the "c" hair. color determines width.  I'll go with the bigger bitas opposed to the wriggle method, though to be honest I expect to render the autoseal useless. Got a nice cork already.
Soup: I think all autoseals are about the same. People may not notice the difference in draws if they have auto-seal on all their hoses. Only real reason I noticed the problem is my "master" socket isn't equiped. I'm planning on experimenting on one of my 3 autosealed sockets. 
ZZZZZT: Thanks for the info. was wondering if I was the only person feeling this way. The autoseals are great in theory, and wonderful if you AREN'T using that socket. But when someone actually wants to use the thing, Ba!