Stainless:
Good point. I have a good relationship with Don Skaggs Jr. Don's dad Don Sr. Invented FireBottle. They take great care of me and their shop is about two hours from my house. I have sold about 50 fire bottle systems for them so it's a two way street.
The SCTA rules do not state SFI 17.1 compliant so the six year SFI limit rule does not come into effect, except getting bottles filed to SFI compliance by the manufacturer. SFI standard I believe changed to only 6 year old cylinders and newer can be SFI 17.1 Sec. 2.7 re-certified. A local company is cannot re-certify to SFI 17.1 standards. According to SFI after 6 refills or 6 years the bottle is no longer certifiable.
http://www.sfifoundation.com/wp-content/pdfs/specs/Spec_17.1_022614.pdf .
The challenge with FireBottle is they have a proprietary valve seal, if you discharge your system, the only way to get one is to send the bottle to them once discharged. User refillable systems and some other systems I understand can be filled by you or local agencies. I discharged a bottle once while servicing the pull cable and it was an expensive mistake.
You can make your own determination as to the motivation behind Sec. 2.7. $$$ Bottom line if you buy a system, get it direct from a system manufacturer with a current date code and not from an automotive aftermarket supplier that may have had the system on the shelf for 8 month... that's 8 months less usable time you have in your six year SFI bottle life cycle.
