$130-175 seems very high to me. I thought my bill of $55 to get my Scubapro MK10 done was high. I`ll be doing my own from now on as you can get the kit for $15
I've posted the response that follows probably a half dozen times in the last few years. Looks like it's time for a repeat...
I fix regs for the love of it. I fix regs for my local shops when they get overloaded. I've been doing it a long time. I'm certified by 75% of the manufacturers out there. Having established some bonafides, let me say this:
Reg repair is not difficult, but it is painstaking and precise. The physics are simple; the practice is not.
Repair and service is generally a
money loser for a dive shop. If you pay your tech $20/hr + benefits, you can barely make it up. Big repair centers excepted.
Properly servicing a salt water reg set (three pieces plus BCD hose plus HP spool) takes three hours (tho' not all at one time, so you can maybe do two sets at once in a small shop with limited bench space).
Your employee cost of ~$27/hr x 8 hours is $216.
Disassemble three regs and wash the sand out of the second stage diaphragms. Segregate the metal parts and protect the orifices and piston knife edge in separate containers and put them in the ultrasonic to remove verdigris corrosion. 25 min.
Come back after working on another set of regs and pull out the parts. Rinse in clean water x 2. Air dry each part with filtered clean air for immediate reassembly. 15 min.
Pull out the kits and lay out the cleaned reg pieces. Inspect the orifices under a microscope and hand polish the nicks with Micromesh (50% of the time). 5-20 min.
Disassemble, clean and lube the bcd connector (don't lose the ball bearings!) and spool. Relace the o-rings.15 min.
Reassemble the three regs and tune IP and cracking effort. 30 min if easy brands and clean regs, 60+ min for challenging models like multiple old D-series Scubapro's. Not to mention a Pilot.
Write out the findings, prepare the bill and package the regs for the customer; 15 min.
So like I said, you can do six sets (18 regs) a day,
properly. If your tech is inexperienced, or drops a tiny part behind the bench, or spends 20 min leafing through the service manual, then maybe half that many.
At $30 per stage, that's $540 in labor max to the shop, and maybe $5-20 per kit profit to the shop. Call it $700 total. Or maybe half that. So for the use of a whole employee for a whole day (who may call in sick and needs to have mfr "training" every three years at $200 per brand carried in the shop, plus travel and hotel), the shop earns $300-400 max, NOT including the cost of shop space, air, lube, etc.
An LDS can earn that much profit selling just two thick wetsuits.
And that explains why most shops do not service regs
properly. Most shops use parts changers who churn through regs, and nick your orifice. I started servicing for myself years ago, after my shop charged me for a "torn diaphragm". My regs never had a torn diaphragm! The tech did it in haste.
So if you find a shop you
trust, $90 for a set plus parts is cheap! Good service is exceedingly hard to find. Will they run a flow test for you to find out where your second stage's venturi crosses over to freeflow? Do they even know what I just said? Will they take the time (unpaid) to explain it all to you?
