HOG Reg Serviceability

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I have 2 HOG D3 1st stages and HOG does not have service kits available. After contacting them I was told to wait a few months for fixing my regs. After paying a lot of money they wanted for me to halt my busy diving season and eventually Chris Richardson from HOG was rude and unprofessional. Be careful before purchasing HOG stuff.

Please help me out. The recommended service interval is 2 years or 200 dives. You're going to hit that in the next "few" months??

Just for sh*ts and giggles, lets say 3 months, 90 days, you're going to average > 2 dives/day for 3 months? I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy. . .:D
 
I have 2 HOG D3 1st stages and HOG does not have service kits available. After contacting them I was told to wait a few months for fixing my regs. After paying a lot of money they wanted for me to halt my busy diving season and eventually Chris Richardson from HOG was rude and unprofessional. Be careful before purchasing HOG stuff.

The D3 kits are back ordered. They will be in. Why are you halting your busy dive season? Have the regs failed? Are they not working at all? As John said the service interval is two years or two hundred dives. Some of my own are past that. But they still don't NEED serviced as they are still performing as they should. The key phrases are "recommended rebuild" and "recommended inspection".

That's the difference with them and others who will beat you or steal your wheaties if you are not dutifully walking them into the shop year after year. With HOG you decide when they need done. I evaluate every reg individually. I am not going to arbitrarily tear down a reg that does not need it.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2
 
So....

Let's recap what happened.

I got a call from you that said you had taken the regs (3 months old and not having ever given you any problems) to Scubatoys because you were planning on doing a BIG DEEP DIVE the following weekend and once there you and they/you decided to tear them down and rebuild them so they would be perfect on the dive. AFTER they were apart you found out that ST didn't have any service parts in stock. You called me and I explained they were in fact on the way and about 3 weeks out. I told you that the HP seat was the same as the d1 and D2 kit and that the shop should be able to get it back together. I also told you as a instructor that the idea of servicing a reg prior to a big dive was stupid, and that I teach my students to alway use gear that has been dived at least a dozen times before on big dives. The call ended. I then went to BTS and during that time you called jack, my operations manager and told him a different version of the story that ended with you threatening that if you didn't get your way you would do everything you could to harm HOG on social media (behavior I won't tolerate from my 7 year old and that is deplorable in an adult). You then overnighted them to the office, they showed up same day I got back from BTS in New Jersey.

Jack sent you two brand new D3 first stages that very same day because you NEEDED the regs back in two weeks to go diving, and that two weeks was pretty much EXACTLY when we expected service kits in, so to be 100% sure you didn't have any problems we sent you new instead of servicing the ones you have.

The next morning you have some lady call and demand to know what we were doing, I told her we had sent you new first stages yesterday. Frankly, between what you had told me, what you had told Jack and what Scubatoys had told me, I was tired of the wide variety of stories and was not exactly receptive to what I perceived as more game playing on your behalf (namely having a employee call me) I told her as much and that if you had a problem with that to call me. She called me back and said "I didn't get a tracking number" I then said "no because I didn't give you one" I then hung up. I did not say good bye.

So, you don't like the poor service I gave you. Fine, throw the ballhat we put in the package in the garbage.

But.... telling people that we halted your dive season is complete and utter crap.

We should have had service kits in stock, no question. However, YOU decided to service something that didn't need it, YOU decided that it would be a good idea to service something not having the parts. Yes, I did tell you that servicing gear before a big dive is not a good idea, let me expound on that in case you misunderstood me. IT'S BONE DEAD STUPID. If your instructor, diving buddy or you came up with that idea, you may want to reconsider your diving and educational choices.





I have 2 HOG D3 1st stages and HOG does not have service kits available. After contacting them I was told to wait a few months for fixing my regs. After paying a lot of money they wanted for me to halt my busy diving season and eventually Chris Richardson from HOG was rude and unprofessional. Be careful before purchasing HOG stuff.
 
Yeah, got a big dive coming up and my regs work fine. But wait....let me completely disassemble them and see if they work once I'm done. :)
 
I got a call from you that said you had taken the regs (3 months old and not having ever given you any problems) to Scubatoys because you were planning on doing a BIG DEEP DIVE the following weekend and once there you and they/you decided to tear them down and rebuild them so they would be perfect on the dive. AFTER they were apart you found out that ST didn't have any service parts in stock.

Why would Scuba Toys disassemble the first stages without any rebuild kits in stock?

---------- Post added April 9th, 2014 at 04:44 PM ----------

The recommended service interval is 2 years or 200 dives.

At what PSI? If someone is using "cave-filled" tanks then I would cut that service interval in half. Were the regulators used as stages and accidentally flooded? The truth is we don't know. I don't approve of the complainer's methods and I feel Chris was more than generous with his resolution, but I do feel that kits should be available even if the product is new.
 
If HOG have all the parts for a new reg then they must have all the spare parts available.
What happen if the new reg fails? A brand new replacement!
What is wrong if the customer wants a early "service"?
As a matter of fact I used to dive well over 100 dives a yr as a recreational diver. And 200 dives within couple of months is nothing for a dive professional in a busy dive shop!
 
I'd imagine EDGE/HOG has boxes containing complete regulators. And pre-packaged "kits" with parts required during annual service. The kits were back ordered, but on the way, as explained by Chris.

The problem with servicing a regulator "early" (for no reason other than "just because") is:


  • Every time you disassemble and reassemble a "soft" marine brass regulator with "hard" steel tools, you risk damage (even though that risk in negligible if the tech is skilled and careful),
  • You risk assembly errors and tuning errors
  • You risk replacing "good" used parts that could have lasted another 10 years with "defective" new parts that fail 10 minutes into the first dive.

Every catastrophic regulator failure (not just a freeflow, but a failure that resulted in total failure of the 1st or 2nd stage) I am personally aware of or have been told about by others has occured immediately after service. The technician made a gross error, was sloppy, or a defective replacement part was used.

That is the reason for using a well-tested regulator on a "big" dive, not a reg that was just serviced.

Best wishes.
 
The crucial part for a first stage rebuild is the HP seat, and cerich mentioned that the HP seat for this regulator is the same as other models, the kits for which were in stock. So, it would have been quite easy to simply use one of those seats.

I don't agree with the idea that you should change the service interval simply because the regs are subject to higher tank pressure. The seat is only subjected to IP, which on a diaphragm reg will actually be a bit lower at very high tank pressures. There is more pressure on HP o-rings, but those are rarely a wear problem, with the exception of the HP piston o-ring. That o-ring does theoretically suffer more wear and tear at higher tank pressures, but I seriously doubt it's enough extra stress to significantly shorten it's life.
 
The crucial part for a first stage rebuild is the HP seat, and cerich mentioned that the HP seat for this regulator is the same as other models, the kits for which were in stock. So, it would have been quite easy to simply use one of those seats.

True, but they would also need to reuse the diaphragm and environmental seal from the old reg these parts are different than previous models. I think most regulator manufacturers recommend changing these parts during each service interval.

I don't agree with the idea that you should change the service interval simply because the regs are subject to higher tank pressure. The seat is only subjected to IP, which on a diaphragm reg will actually be a bit lower at very high tank pressures. There is more pressure on HP o-rings, but those are rarely a wear problem, with the exception of the HP piston o-ring. That o-ring does theoretically suffer more wear and tear at higher tank pressures, but I seriously doubt it's enough extra stress to significantly shorten it's life.

We can agree to disagree on that issue.
 
..., but I do feel that kits should be available even if the product is new.
Agree.
How, when and where etc to service the reg is not the point.
Imagine you offer a service course and then say sorry spare parts are NOT available.
or We cannot offer the course because the spare parts are not yet available and please come back in few months time.
or Someone want to buy a HOG and enquire the respective spare parts and then been told it is NOT available for another few months!!!
Good PR.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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