There is a guy in Oregon state that works on the old double hose regs and other
vintage dive gear you may want to give that a try.
But I'm with Ragnar on this one, I will not give Mares one cent of my money.
I love my old Dacor stuff but I did make the switch to Scubapro and have been extremely happy with it.
P.S. I have some old Dacor regs for sale in excellent condition 360 first stage
with a XP second ($60) as always any life support system must be checked by
a qualified expert to determine that the unit is fit for intended use.
The reason why Mares did not "support" the Dacor regulators is due to the tremendous cost to do so. Dacor had all outside vendors producing their parts such as diaphragms, and HP valve assemblies. When Mares bought the company name, they purchased a corporation that was preparing to file for bankruptcy.
From an economic standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense to spend $10,000 designing and building an injection mold for creating a $10 retail second stage diaphragm that you "might" sell a few hundred of over a span of years. You have to remember, Mares did not acquire any molds, jigs, or any other tooling necessary to produce the hundreds of parts used in Dacor regulators. Not to mention, the other gear...
I owned Dacor regs from the last few years. I also know individuals who worked for the company all the way to the end. Dacor was slowly being forced out of the business primarily due to the lack of financial resources to do the necessary R&D to remain competitive in the market. As much as we hate to hear it, the diving industry is not a huge market.
The last few Dacor reg designs were way too complicated, particularly with the first stages. The number of O-rings was staggering. The performance on the ANSTI simulator was okay, but pretty far removed from many other similarly priced regs on the market. While the modular concept of building a first stage had its merits, it really wasn't necessary. You simply don't need 3 parts to do the job of 1.
In short, the acquistion of Dacor probably wasn't the wisest move that HTM made. To set-up production of the necessary parts to service the line of gear would have been a HUGE financial error. I personally don't think that they should have made the deal, as it has created quite a stir among Dacor owners. Of course, had the company not been bought out, the parts wouldn't have been made available anyway.
If anyone is interested in starting production of the necessary parts, I can give you this bit of information. Friends of mine have been reproducing parts for vintage regs for a few years. The mold cost to produce a part as simple as a second stage valve seat is in the thousands. That doesn't cover the cost of production. Imagine the cost of designing/producing a part like a HP valve assembly.
Look at it this way...Will Penske start producing every part needed to virtually rebuild a 10 year old Saturn from ground up? Not hardly...
Greg Barlow
Former Science Editor for Rodale's Scuba Diving Magazine
