3 instructors near miss

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"Hello, my name is James. I have been trying to reach you about your regulator warranty. Our records indicate that your warranty will expire soon, or has expired To save yourself costly repairs, we have an extended coverage policy that we can customize to your needs. I recommend the Platinum plan, for only $795 down, and as low as $85 a month, all covered repairs to your regulators will be paid by the plan administrators, as long as you take your regulators to an authorized service center. Parts may be replaced with used parts of like kind and quality. If you would like more information, please press 1 now."
 
Glad you're all safe!

As one of the three, I'm pretty glad myself! (I was the one who would have been taken out by flying debris on the top deck :wink:)

I noticed in one of the threads posted by @Rusty Shackleford that @abnfrog was involved in the discussion, so I struggle to believe that this is a matter of incorrect parts being used during servicing. And if this was a long known issue, I'm surprised that the faulty parts would even still be floating around at this point. Maybe I'm naively optimistic. I'm certainly no service tech. The failure did look very similar to some of the failure images in the other threads. All I know for certain is that I definitely didn't expect a first stage body to explode with nobody nearby, and no changes in the stresses being imposed on the device... there are plenty of other spots I would have assumed would fail first, before that ever became a possibility!

This makes me wonder how much equipment is floating around with secret lynch pins in them, waiting to disintegrate, that I'm blindly putting my trust into? Ugh, does this mean I'm going to have to walk home now, too? What if my car explodes next?! (That was meant to be a joke, but now that I think about it I'm realizing that they did sell exploding vehicles for a while... hmm...)
 
And you wonder why I'm a stickler for "torque to specification"...

Yeah, we'll mention this. It's a very old issue that should only affect a MK20 that's been hidden in a closet for fifteen years. It was sortof a design flaw that didn't account for shop monkeys overtightening yoke bolts. Scubapro redesigned the bolt. I'll send you the Service Bulletin, although I think it's here on the Board somewhere.

Whomever used this reg had ignored a critical service bulletin from over a decade ago. As @runsongas pointed out above, any Scubapro tech should have seen the red flag with three vents in a Mk20 saddle.

I wonder how many of these failed regulators had their DIN assembly torqued by a big, long automotive ft-lbs torque wrench or a long ratchet?

As opposed to the small torque wrench calibrated in inch pounds?

I bet it was a case of using the wrong tool for the job or using it incorrectly.
 
it is still 266 inch-pounds, no matter what you are using...

upload_2021-7-20_17-1-43.png


This is the old schematic, and you can see that the part does not have the shoulder the replacement one has to prevent it from being forced too far into the body...
 
My guess is that the recall item was missed by a shop awhile back. Since it's been 16 years since the recall and there are lots of techs who don't even look at the service bulletins, it was likely missed again and again because so many don't even know about the recall.
A little over-torque, again and again with subsequent services, and boom! from fatigue.
 
I still find mk-20's on this very board that haven't been updated....
 
Yep.... 20+ year old regs not used in 20 years...
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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