maintainence on regulator worries

[annie]

>>I read your thread and its very interesting. I notice it starts off with the techician claiming both of your 2nd stages failed at the same time because of a low pressure seat. People in the thread point out this is unlikely and it must be your 1st stage, valve or no air left in the tank. Then you go back to the tech and he discovers your first stage is crusted.

How could he have ever missed that in the first place? God I certainly wouldn't want him "servicing" my reg.<<

It wasn't the same technician, my fault if it gave that impression. The first guy was in Indonesia who probably wasn't properly qualified anyway. The second was here in Ireland; he seemed fairly professional to me.

>>You could service your regulator after every single dive and it doesn't mean it'll never fail.<<

Well it's a lot less likely to fail then if you wait until it's completely crusted like I did. I was just trying to point to my own experience - as an argument for regular servicing - what's the alternative unless we do it ourselves? Most of us can't.

Kenh20 I appreciate what you're saying; if you know a lot about machines you probably don't like to depend on someone else doing it.

>>But for preventative maintainence to be successful it has to be backed up by research and rigorous procedures to ensure that the cure isn't worse than the disease.<<

To be honest I reckon ScubaPro's procedures are probably fairly rigorous after all it's in their own interests that regularly serviced regs don't fail. The testing involved sounded pretty rigorous to me - it'd be easy to find out, ask any shop what the process is. If you know about machines you could probably evaluate the shop and the processes yourself.

Annie

 

[MikeFerrara]

chrpai once bubbled...
Checkout http://www.njscuba.net/dive_gear/eqpt_regulators.html

and let me know what you think. Personally I don't service my regulators, but admitting that tends to get me flammed.

I strongly disgree with the article.

First of all if the tech isn't any good all bets are off and you don't want them working on your reg even if it's broke.

Common rebuild kits include high presure seat in the first stage and the "low" presure seat in the second stage. these parts do wear out and can cause a total failure of the regulator. Other parts that are replaced are mostly o-rings but the diaghram of a daighram reg is also replaced. Some o-rings always show wear and some look new. For instance the o-ring on a piston of a "piston" reg is one that does wear. If not replaced when needed water, salt and contaminants will get by. Talk about a mess.

I don't watch the calander for my servicing but I carry tools and kiits and can rebuild a reg any place, any time.

If you don't want a trip or a dive ruined or worse it's best to follow the manufacturers recommendations. They designed it. they have done life testing and other testing and know the mean time to failure. A reg may go more than a year but it may not go two. It might even go a good bit longer but what are you willing to bet.

 

[chrpai]

>>I strongly disgree with the article.

As a shop owner I would expect you to.

>>I don't watch the calander for my servicing but I carry tools >>and kiits and can rebuild a reg any place, any time.

You just disagreed with yourself. This indicates that you service your regs when they need servicing and not some arbitrary schedule.

>>If you don't want a trip or a dive ruined or worse it's best to >>follow the manufacturers recommendations.

If your kit is redundant your dive will not be ruined.

>>They designed it. they have done life testing and other testing >>and know the mean time to failure. A reg may go more than a >>year but it may not go two. It might even go a good bit longer >>but what are you willing to bet.

I guess they must all be the exact same design since they all have the exact same 1 year or 50 dives requirement? I'll take a bet that it will go longer and that I'll save money in the long run without risking my personal safety or enjoyment.

 

[MikeFerrara]

chrpai once bubbled...
>>I strongly disgree with the article.

As a shop owner I would expect you to.

If you try to predict what I will do based on the fact that I own a shop you will make a fool of yourself just about every time.

>>I don't watch the calander for my servicing but I carry tools >>and kiits and can rebuild a reg any place, any time.

You just disagreed with yourself. This indicates that you service your regs when they need servicing and not some arbitrary schedule.

No, it means I have too many things to do and to many regs. It also means that because of it I sometimes spend evening on a porch in cave country rebuilding regs that I didn't have time to do before the trip and I don't like the way they breath. You can use preventative maintemance to avoid failure or you can fix things when they break. Prevention needs to be done on some schedule to work.

>>If you don't want a trip or a dive ruined or worse it's best to >>follow the manufacturers recommendations.

If your kit is redundant your dive will not be ruined.

How many reef kickers do you come accross in the Caribbean with redundant kits? Even so...when a reg fails on a dive you end the dive after shutting down and switching. Then you hope that your buddy doesn't need air from you before you hit the surface.

>>They designed it. they have done life testing and other testing >>and know the mean time to failure. A reg may go more than a >>year but it may not go two. It might even go a good bit longer >>but what are you willing to bet.

I guess they must all be the exact same design since they all have the exact same 1 year or 50 dives requirement? I'll take a bet that it will go longer and that I'll save money in the long run without risking my personal safety or enjoyment.

That's exactly what you are betting.

Actually most designs are pretty simalar. As a manufacturing and automation engineer I have helped put many preventative maintanence schedules in place. The idea is to do it before it breaks. Sometimes we just steal some one elses proven schedule for a like piece of equipment cause it saves time and money. That doesn't make it less valid. your reg may not fail at 366 days or 51 dives but as time goes on preformance degrades and the probability of an actual failure increase.

BTW, when I replace the filters on my compressor my air still meets modified grade E requirements right out of the compressor. Maybe I should wait til I fail an air test.


Folks without all those little rubber o-rings your reg won't work. Some are static and don't wear much. Others are on moving parts and look like crap after a year. Sometimes I fing o-rings in regs and valves that are hard as rock or degraded to the point they are shredding. Sand, salt and other stuff can get into a second stage where you can't rinse it away and it just tears stuff up. The high and low presure seats on a reg will go bad even if the reg isn't used. I have seen piston regs where the piston o-ring let enough water past that the inside was so coroded that if it were mine I would have just tossed the thing.

By all means wait as long as you want.

 

[annie]

>>How many reef kickers do you come accross in the Caribbean with redundant kits?<<

Most divers whether they're reef kickers or not don't have redundant kit. We're not mechanics either. We do rely on the servicing. I guess like anything else, we just evaluate as much as we can how professional the service person is and if we're happy to go with - we can't do much more than that. To be honest, if I was well informed about machines and had ideas about how it should be done I would, like kenh2o, take a more active interest in evaluating the procedures involved.
I wonder has anyone mechanically minded done that? An independant evaluation of reg servicing procedures?

 

[shellbird]

Why not err in the side of caution, my Scubapro rig requires annual maintenance for the lifetime warranty to be honored. Not only that, but should they upgrade or improve on the design, I will receive the upgrades as well.

Not having your reg serviced seems like not changing the oil in your car, I am not an expert but stuff gets in the works and needs to be cleaned out at the very least - to never service your reg seems negligent. Just my two-cents.

 

[redacted]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...



Folks without all those little rubber o-rings your reg won't work. Some are static and don't wear much. Others are on moving parts and look like crap after a year. Sometimes I fing o-rings in regs and valves that are hard as rock or degraded to the point they are shredding. Sand, salt and other stuff can get into a second stage where you can't rinse it away and it just tears stuff up. The high and low presure seats on a reg will go bad even if the reg isn't used. I have seen piston regs where the piston o-ring let enough water past that the inside was so coroded that if it were mine I would have just tossed the thing.

By all means wait as long as you want.

Interesting, but it seems to me that a failing piston o-ring is going to let gas out rather than water in - at least until the tank is empty. I suspect such crud would more likely come from letting water in like by improper soaking. While my experience is very limited, the dynamic o-rings on my Mk20 were over 4 years old when I finally sacrificed a kit because the HP seat was getting a bit irratic. The o-rings looked OK. Yes, I do think I take faily good care of it in terms of post dive cleaning but nothing special. I did rebuild an e-bay air2 that smelled like the previous owner was a sea lion. It had hardened & cracking o-rings but still worked.

Oh, this reef kicker carries a couple extra kits. It the cheapest trip insurance I have found. While neither I or my wife have had to use them, others on the boat have been most grateful.

 

[zboss]

I recommend getting the reg looked at even if it seems to be working fine. Things can happen after the reg has been sitting in a hot boat, bumped, whatever... the IP can drift or the diaphram can get wierd.

Halfway through my last dive trip my octo started to bubble. While this wasn't a big issue - it wasn't free flowing - of the reg started getting worse I was out of luck unless I wanted to pay greatly inflated prices to get a local dive shop to look at it.

 

[MikeFerrara]

awap once bubbled...


Interesting, but it seems to me that a failing piston o-ring is going to let gas out rather than water in - at least until the tank is empty. I suspect such crud would more likely come from letting water in like by improper soaking.

I guess it seems that way. Reference Vance Hatlow's book page 12. It's a moving part remember. Either way though the result is the same.

How long a reg can go before performance degrades will probably depend on many things like how the reg is stored, the conditions you dive in, how well you take care of it, how many tiny drops of water get in during rinse and or during assemble to the tank, so on and so forth. The manufacturer can't measure of predict the result of all these things and neither can I but it seems they're confident their reg will survive at least a year. Beyond that they don't seem to want to promise anything.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Hey...any of you who don't believe in serviceing regs ever read the owners manual for your car?