Drysuit Zip Seals From Hell

[Beau640]

I picked up a new drysuit that has zip seals which I've never had to deal with before. It's the OMS drysuit made by DUI which comes with zip seals installed. Well, I've been playing around with installing/uninstalling the seals and these seem like the zip seals from hell! I've watched all the DUI videos, read the manual, watched any other videos I could find and it is still a super big pain in the butt to install these. I know it's user error I'm sure so I'm just looking for some help.

The DUI video makes it look so easy. With a DUI suit, it seems like the seal fits inside of the cuff perfectly and you just go around clicking it in after applying some soapy water. However on my OMS suit with zip seals installed, the seal doesn't fit inside the cuff perfectly. If you look at the pictures below, the seal is like the exact same size as the cuff if not slightly bigger and keeps popping/bulging out. If you force it into the wrist portion of the cuff then it will bend inwards to accommodate since it is the exact same size/slightly bigger than the cuff. I then have to apply A LOT of force to get that inward bend out, and half the time while doing it the opposite side of the seal will come out and pop out of the cuff.

Please correct my user error. I would like to live in this fantasy world/heaven where the seal actually fits perfectly inside of the cuff without bending/force/popping out

 

[guruboy]

How are you trying to press the curved part out?

 

[Beau640]

Doing what the video/instructions showed. Seal is partially pushed in so you can get your thumb to press up against the inside of the seal and your fingers to push on the outside of the seal to attempt to seal them together.

Hard to show from the video but I'm imitating what they are doing here. Just when they show them putting the seal in the sleeve/just inside the cuff in the video, everything slides in easily without bulge/popping out. it's like my cuff is too small to accept the seal.

 

[guruboy]

When you try to put the seal in, try bending it into a U like a double taco first. Then you can put the entire thing into the hole and start sealing half of it. Then pop it round again.

 

[KevinNM]

You might check with @kathydui

The people I know who have zip seals love them other than the cost of the occasional replacement.

 

[WarrenZ]

Is the suit cold sometimes cold plastic can be hard to manipulate?

Other than that try painting your nails pink?

 

[Beau640]

Directions unclear, zip seals painted pink but still won't go in.

Kidding. Suit is not cold when attempting this. I'm wondering if this is a problem with the OMS suits made by DUI or if it's just my suit or just my lack of experience with the zip seals. I've seen other people install them on their DUI suits and it seems so easy and they don't have this bending/oversized seal issue.

I'm able to eventually get it to line up and stop bulging with force but it takes about 45 minutes a seal as i have to continually fight with attempting to get one side to line up and then the other side pops out, or sealing/clicking in one side but then attempting to fix the bulge on the other side then causes the sealed side to unzip and pop out...so frustrating.

 

[tkdgodess]

I have a month old new dui clx 450... My wrist zips seem slightly smaller than the zip on the zip gloves. With a bit of effort they do fit, even if seems they dont. The second time seemed a bit easier, after some practice im sure. It doesnt take me 45 mins. Maybe 5 mins per glove at most the second time.

 

[_Ralph]

Looks like (hard to tell) that you are putting the hand side of the seal too far into the arm side of the seal.

There should be an external ridge on the wrist side, and the rest is the 'zipper'

_R

 

[Beau640]

@_Ralph got it. I knew I was doing something wrong. Theres essentially 3 ridges on the cuff, and 3 ridges on the glove. They interlock/zip and you either zip them together with the glove having the innermost ridge, or you line them up the other way with the suit having the inner most ridge and the glove side having the outer most ridge

The zip fine the wrong way and when I dove they didn't leak, but they just didn't seem as secure and when taking off the suit they would pop off by accident/too easy. Re-reading what _Ralph said I re-tried with using the glove seal as the outermost ridge and they pop in super easy, are more secure, and took less than 5 minutes to install both of them now.

Just wanted to update this in case down the road someone ends up in a similar situation!


Edit: i tried to have a text part show how the ridges should line up but the formatting here clumped it all together. instead i attached a screen shot since it wouldn't format right.