1st and/or 2nd stage leaking problem, please help

[ams511]

My thoughts would be that the first stage is creeping. The intermediate pressure increases over time (5 minutes) which causes your octopus to free flow. The tech should have caught this before you received the regulator back from service. Possible causes could be a bad seat, a bad O-ring, a weak spring, or a damaged piston.

 

[halocline]

My thoughts would be that the first stage is creeping. The intermediate pressure increases over time (5 minutes) which causes your octopus to free flow. The tech should have caught this before you received the regulator back from service. Possible causes could be a bad seat, a bad O-ring, a weak spring, or a damaged piston.

This is talked about in the thread earlier, but a weak mainspring or leaking o-ring will not cause IP creep. The only two possibilities are seat and piston. But you're right in that it does sound like a bad case of the creeps.

 

[elan]

My thoughts would be that the first stage is creeping. The intermediate pressure increases over time (5 minutes) which causes your octopus to free flow. The tech should have caught this before you received the regulator back from service. Possible causes could be a bad seat, a bad O-ring, a weak spring, or a damaged piston.

If it takes 5 mins for the pressure to build up the sec stage will never flow as with every breath it resets. It should be capable of building the pressure within few seconds (in between the inhalations)

 

[amoses]

Thank you to everyone who has contributed on this thread. I wanted to update everyone on the results. Sorry, no pictures, he didn't save the parts. After a week I called and they still were not ready. First He said that there was nothing wrong with the 1st stage and had a part ordered for the 2nd stage. Later, changed his story and said that the 1st stage was fixed but he found an additional problem in the 2nd stage, but didn't know when parts would be in. Regs would not be ready for the weekend, and he had nothing to let me use for the weekend because a class was using all the equipment. He blamed the continual problems on old gear. I told him I was not confident in his repairs and wanted to pick them up as they were and take them somewhere else.

So, I took them to a certified Scubapro shop and the 1st stage was still leaking. They fixed everything for me in about 30 minutes while I waited, hooked everything up and showed me, checked all the pressures, explained the issues, etc.

Hopefully they are finally repaired right. I feel a little more confident in this shop (Lone Star Scuba - Fort Worth, TX), I believe I will be doing my business there from now on.

 

[herman]

Find a better shop. First off, if you paid for the parts (not "free" ) then he has no right to throw away your parts...they are YOURS. Before I started doing my own regs, I insisted shops return my used parts, I knew what they should look like and wanted to inspect them myself....plus it makes it a lot harder to fake replacing parts. Second, age of the reg has absolutely nothing to do with it being servicable as long as parts are available, I have a bunch of 50+ yo regs that are still going strong.....just serviced a 1956-7 reg a few weeks ago and dove it last Friday.

 

[halocline]

I'm glad you went to lone star, I told you those were good guys. What was their explanation of the problem?