Neoprene drysuit fixer-upper -- is it worth it?

[AbyssalPlains]

Hi all,

I got a used BARE drysuit off eBay a while ago, tried it once in the pool, found it to be leaking and concluded the neck and possibly the wrist seals need to be replaced and potentially the valves might leak, too. According to BARE, testing and fixing the suit would cost somewhere around 200 bucks. At the time I bought the suit, I knew nothing about drysuits, so I thought I bought a crushed neoprene suit. Turns out it is regular neoprene. So my question is, should I just get rid of it and buy something more useful, i.e. a new shell drysuit that fits me in the first place? My hunch is that with a regular neoprene drysuit, I would need so much weight it's not funny anymore. Am I mistaken?

 

[Luis H]

I have a full neoprene dry suit and a tri-lam. I like the tri-lam a lot because the suit itself is a lot lighter. The actual amount of lead weight for both is not that much different (if I want to stay really warm in the tri-lam) and it is substantially more than with my two piece 7mm wet suit.

The total weight out of the water is a lot less with the tri-lam, but like I said is mostly the suit weight. After the dive the neoprene is even heavier because it is wet.

The neoprene suit can be warmer on anything but fairly deep dives. For the tri-lam to be very warm you really need to allow enough air to allow the insulation to really loft, but this allows you to be flexible about how much weight you want to have depending on the undergarment and loft needed.

Personally, for $200, if the suit is not in bad shape and it fits you, I would fix it and use it. With the neoprene suit you may not need any undergarment at all and it would this would get you diving dry with very little investment.

For that kind of money you can always keep it as a back up.


BTW, the neoprene suit with no undergarment can be just as flexible as a wet suit and it can dive in many ways similar to a wet suit.

The tri-lam with my heavy Potlatch Power Stretch undergarment feels great, but it is not the same. With respect to how it dives and feels, in many ways I find the type of undergarment to be more important that the type of tri-lam.

 

[ScubaSarus]

Someone gave me a 5 yr old neoprene drysuit fixer-upper. We called it the Aquaseal suit for good reasons. Lasted 2 months Jan-Feb diving in Rhode Island until the zipper gave way. It needed lots of weight; but beyond that it was quite cozy and I didn't mind a small leak here or there as we don't deep dive in 34 Deg F water.