Regulator to Tank -- How Tight?

[falvesjr]

I have a new Ninja regulator that needs to go onto a new tank and am wondering if it should be tightened by hand only or if a tool should be used. What's the right way to do this? What about removing a regulator from a tank? Should it be removable by hand or are tools needed?

[plinker81366]

i always hand tighten my regulators,, be it ninja, jds, pure energy, and chinese regs

[nervoustrigger]

The O-ring does the sealing therefore it only needs to be hand tight.

Getting the original regulator off?  Well, if it's a Ninja, they tighten the h-e-double hockey sticks out of it.  I doubt a well-trained orangutan could remove it by hand.  What I do is carefully clamp the bonnet in my bench vise (jaws lined with wood to prevent marring it), and then I use a strap wrench on the bottle to remove it.  A turn of electrical tape applied around the bottle gives the strap a solid grip.

[falvesjr]

Thanks guys!

[Kinetic45^]

Hard hand tight then the pressure locks the threads, 500 PSI and you are not unscrewing it.  But nothing is idiot proof so somewhere, sometime, someone has/will get a wrench and unscrew a pressurized bottle.  And sometimes the threads are tight enough tolerance that they hold pressure even though the o-ring is not sealing anymore.
That's why the valve threads are supposed to have a vent passage on the lower half so the bottle vents before all the threads are out.  Except recently I saw some valves that lacked that safety feature...  Caveat Emptor