Apeks 1st stage HP Seats - Overblown (Pun intended)

[98TJ10]

Recently I've been reading about what seems to be a couple years of a bad batch of HP seats coming from Apeks rebuild kits. Is this issue strictly related to parts kits or were new regulators impacted as well? I have a set of ~2018-2019 DS4's that haven't been dove yet...not sure if they could have the bad seats or if I am safe..was planning on just doing an IP check. Is this problem overhyped?

 

[buddhasummer]

I'm going with over hyped. Yes, I have read reports but I have no first hand experience or has anyone in my near circle had any issues. I've also sold a ton of kits and no one has reported any issues. If it was a bad batch perhaps it was geographically based?

 

[GF99/99]

I'm going with over hyped. Yes, I have read reports but I have no first hand experience or has anyone in my near circle had any issues. I've also sold a ton of kits and no one has reported any issues. If it was a bad batch perhaps it was geographically based?

I have had the exact same experience. Read some reports on here about it happening but no detailed description or pictures ever posted about what exactly happened.

I have over a dozen Apeks first stages all different years as do most of my friends and some dive center owners that I am close friends with and none of us have experienced this problem. Quite a few major main stream rebreather companies come standard with Apeks regs on them too and I have never heard of them reporting any issues with there first stages.

 

[evandroairton]

I've had a dst seat failure twyce, the later was my diluent reg on an inspiration, but i don't have fingers to point at. it was an old regulator, but serviced around 2017, and the second failure after was serviced in 2021

 

[broncobowsher]

I never heard of this being an issue before. But I had one that got new in early 2018 and failed a year later in early 2019. Didn't have a kit with me and took it by a local shop that was well respected for a rush repair. Confirmed the issue, rebuilt it and said it was super clean inside and nothing looked wrong. Works fine now. Never thought of anything except a fluke failure. It was a diluent regulator on a rEvo. Worked fine on the build up, failed on the pre-dive. It was just IP creep, not catastrophic failure.

 

[Pao]

None. I own 8 Apeks 1st stages in total in various flavors. I service them myself and no blown seats so far. But I have encountered 2nd stage soft seats being chewed up prematurely.

 

[Zeketheviking]

I had one last week. DST from 2020, only 4 dives, worked fine three days before, failed when hooked up to the tank. Second stage free flow, IP pegged my gauge. Taking it out tomorrow to test.

 

[Geo7]

I had a brandnew DS4 with IP creep about three years ago. Put in a new seat and noticed a scratch on the old one. I let the german retailer know and never got a reply...