Any other tips I can read for better maintenance practices?
It's a guild system. Apprentices learn from experienced techs and then pass that knowledge along. There is no school. Vance Harlow's book has tips, but no theory. Wolfinger has theory but no tips.
The courses techs learn from are parts-changing courses. Scubapro is as good as it gets. They have three levels of training, from Intro to Advanced to Pro, and René Dupré knows their regs cold. But he's not in repair. He doesn't see what we see when guys bring in their train wrecks for an "Annual Service", except it's been six years.
And to add to that, fully 40% of the attendees at the Intro course have never even opened a reg before. So nobody has taught them how to handle a pick. But the mfr cert course isn't designed for that.
And they're the new graduate at their shop, except that there's only one other tech, and he's not there to teach the new guy, who's expected to "know", since he now has the certificate.
And then our brethren only want to pay $30 per stage, even when their regs are green with corrosion. The shop owner can't spare the time it'd really take the tech to check the service bulletins for your model (one of thirty that the shop sees), test it for baseline, disassemble it, clean it, inspect it under the microscope, reassemble it, find that the IP drift it has from the scarred piston really requires polishing he doesn't know how to do, call you on the phone for permission to spend $60 on a new piston, disassemble it, replace the piston, reassemble it and test it again. They literally can't afford it!
I wish that story were unusual, but it's fully 20% of the regs I see. If my shop owner prices by time required to do a perfect repair, since bad news travels 5x good news, the money he gets for an expensive repair will cost him more in badmouthing from the unhappy customer (who should be ecstatic that a shop was able to restore his piece of junk).
Am I ranting?
Maybe someday someone will write the basic book. The one you read before you take your first course. Years ago, I spent $3k on tuition and motel going to a shop for a week of basic training. I then spent another $2k on eBay regs and service kits to practice on. Then more travel expense for official manufacturer courses at $200-400 per brand. That finally entitled me to service your regs in my first shop, where I really started learning what actually comes in the door. I'm up to nine mfrs, and 12 "brands". And I'm still learning.
No, the list of what I wasn't taught could fill a book. But with 95% of divers doing no-stop diving, and the rest checking their gear more carefully, we don't kill anyone. Just lots of equipment nightmare stories for ScubaBoard.
"It ain't rocket science, but it sure is precise! "
