Overhauling regulators

[Genesis]

Got to agree with genesis also about them there brake parts, kinda makes me think we make mountains out of mole hills huh

Anything the local shop can do to extort, er, extract more money from you with threats and demands is good, you see.

It never has been about "safety" or anything related to it. My usual retort to such a claim by some idiot savant is to demand that in exchange for fixing my regs the tech agrees, in writing, that if he screws up and my reg locks up at 130' he will take my place and die for me.

Funny how their "safety" claims evaporate instantly in the face of that position. Gee, they're real confident in their ability, right? They're so concerned that you'll cack yourself fixing your own regs that by god, they even refuse to do the dying for you if they screw up!

(Yes, that's sarcasm for the reading-impaired!)

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Genesis once bubbled...
..you (conveniently?) forgot about the stack of brake pads at the local AutoZone.

I normally buy my brake pads at NAPA, but you're missing the point...it's an issue of industry standards. It is considered normal and prudent to sell brake pads to car owners because car owners have been working on their own brakes almost since the first car rolled out of the factory. It is a standard practice in the automotive industry and the idea is well established that drivers should not be working on their own brakes if they don't know how and that it is their own fault if they do it and screw it up.

Selling regulator parts to untrained do it yourselfers is not an industry standard practice so if you do it and someone dies because they screwed up their reg you will be sued because you assisted and encouraged them in doing something they were not adequately trained to do.

We have a sport here where you as an individual diver can get sued for not sticking with your never-met-him-before cattle boat dive buddy who then gets himself dead doing something stupid. His grieving widow and her attorney will point out that diving with a buddy is a standard saftey practice that you violated and will sue you for being negligent.

Now, if this same deceased dive buddy also died because his local dive shop sold him parts to repair his own reg and he screwed it up (let's say he missed the signs of a HP O-ring pinch in his very simple Mark 10), the LDs will get sued, the manufactuer will get sued, and you and your attorney will be right in there too citing the faulty DIY reg repair as a contributory factor on the part of the diver as well as pointing a finger at the LDS for violating industry standards regarding parts sales to unqualified persons in the first place as a means to try to get you off the hook on your law suit.

Again, we are talking about litigation here, not whether something is right or wrong here and certainly not about common sense.

 

[blacknet]

DA Aquamaster,

Instead of spreading more BS lets hear cases, give me the case #, the ruling and the locations, I want to look them up. Untill that this is all BS. Many reg companies are moving towards letting the end user work on their own gear.

Besides what's more likely to happen is the widow is apt to sue the instructor for being an idiot and taking the guy well beyond his training relm and abandoning him when the @#$% hits the fan.

People we have to look beyond this smoke and mirror BS that's put up by the industry.

Ed

 

[DA Aquamaster]

quimby once bubbled...
Diverite already does that parts are listed on their web site and so is the manual in pdf format and abyss also lists and sells their parts kits and info.

I had to check the dive rite thing out. I could not find parts on their website and there is an owners manual in PDF format, but on page 10 of the manual Dive Rite (under the huge bold heading of "important") states "Any and all replacement of regulator parts and adjustment of settings is only to be perfromed by qualified technicians working under the direct(tion) of an Dive Rite dealer or distributor."

They also have the industry standard boiler plate about the need for professional service and the same basic warranty provisions as Scubapro requiring annual factory approved service to maintain the warranty. And this is from a comany selling to technical divers who are already taking substantially more risks than the average rec diver. You want companies who sell primarily to run of the mill rec divers to do more?

Violating an industry standard practice as a matter of company policy would also make it very dfficult for a company to get liability insurance. A company may choose to go it alone and skip product liability insurance and instead choose to aggressively defend and contest each and every law suit. Historically these companies have done very well right up until they lose a law suit and go under. It may be an option for a small or relatively new company but is not really a valid option for a large or long established company.

Got to agree with genesis also about them there brake parts, kinda makes me think we make mountains out of mole hills huh

I couldn't agree more, that's what product liability lawsuits are all about.

 

[Genesis]

I normally buy my brake pads at NAPA, but you're missing the point...it's an issue of industry standards. It is considered normal and prudent to sell brake pads to car owners because car owners have been working on their own brakes almost since the first car rolled out of the factory. It is a standard practice in the automotive industry and the idea is well established that drivers should not be working on their own brakes if they don't know how and that it is their own fault if they do it and screw it up.

Selling regulator parts to untrained do it yourselfers is not an industry standard practice so if you do it and someone dies because they screwed up their reg you will be sued because you assisted and encouraged them in doing something they were not adequately trained to do.

Nonsense.

Me thinks you own or work at a dive shop, or make a business in some way related to the diving industry.

Gee, let's see, there is this thing called a waiver that we are all forced to sign in order to get training or dive on someone's boat (or at their quarry/spring.) We have to give up our (and our estate's) right to sue if we cack ourselves doing these things.

Said waivers have been upheld as valid, even when someone has tried an inventive way around them.

Now please 'splain to me why that's not the solution to this problem - that is, assuming you are actually interested in SEEING such a solution!

 

[quimby]

Serviceable -- Dive Rite regulators all feature an impressive limited lifetime warranty. Some divers choose to avail themselves of warranty service at authorized service centers. Others prefer the do-it-yourself method. With Dive Rite, there are no mysteries. Dive Rite Express offers complete service parts kits, spares, and maintenance manuals
taken from http://www.diveriteexpress.com/regs/regulators.shtml
scroll down and note parts and prices then at bottom click on library >owners manual>Regulator Service Manual or just
http://www.diveriteexpress.com/library/manuals.shtml

and for abyss
http://www.abysmal.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=abysmal&Category_Code=REG

 

[MikeFerrara]

Much of the paroting at the LDS is honest. They repeat what they were taught and most of them believe what they say.

Liability is part of the reason that a shop won't teach you to servince a reg. I don't teach a diving class unless I have credientials that say I'm qualified to teach that class. The insurance company won't cover me unless I'm teaching a class that's sanctioned by an agency and has given me the ok to teach it.

I won't now nor have I ever taught reg repair because I have no credentials to do so. I do make students aware of resources like the Oxyhacker books. I don't force them to stay ignorant but I can not qualify them to repair regs or anything else.

In fact, when teaching an equipment specialist class, even though I can demonstrate a reg rebuild, tank inspection or whatever, it is a requirement of the class that I tell them that they are not qualified to perform those tasks. I mean it's a honest to goodness, in bold type, requirement of the class that I tell them that.

As far as industry standard practice, the only one who can bless you to do service is the manufacturer and the only training that counts is theirs.

If a dive shop was teaching reg repair and they were sued I don't think they'd have a chance. They would be judged based on what "the prudent" instructor or shop would do and they would be alone in their practices with no way to support their position.

 

[The Chairman]

in a country many of us live in now, the major automotive manufacturers decided that only -THEY- should work on cars with their logo on it. So they instituted a convoluted network of parts distribution, service centers and even specified in their warranty and preached to their customers that any car serviced by non-factory personell was subsequently out of warranty. In their greed they extended this mantra to oil changes, belt replacements etc, although they did stop short when it came to tires. In several landmark decisions, the US Congress and Senate crafted legislation to strip them of their monopoly. So now we enjoy the freedom of having our oil changed by Jiffy Lube (with few if any certified technicians) or even by ourselves with NO impact on our warranty. In addition, our legislature made it law that they MUST carry replacement parts for any vehicle manufactured for at least 10 years subsequent to the last date of manufacture and that they could NOT restrict the availability of these to anyone. Later, the ruling on availability was extended (by the courts) to include any tools (diagnostic or otherwise) needed to service said vehicles. Somewhere, there was even legislation to the effect that they could not even lie to their customers about the serviceability of their warranty. To insure that some semblence of quality was maintained, the NIASE (National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence) was created and was later renamed ASE. Unfortunately, this is a self regulated area and mechanics are not compelled by law to be certified. In fact, fully half of America's automotive work force have no certifications whatsoever. Somehow the automotive industry has survived this legislative intrusion and for the most part, the vehicles on our roads remain quite safe.

Unfortunately, there are not near as many regulators out there as there are Chryslers, so we do not have the clout the motoring public did. Still, it would be nice to see the regulator manufacturers smell the coffee and respond to the current market forces. But protectionism and a fear of revenue loss keep them in a backward thinking mode. Not sure how we will deal with this as time progresses.

As for the diatribe about not diving with someone in a wreck who services their own regulators... hogwash. I have had three equipment failures... one on a factory authorised newly serviced reg, one on a reg that needed to be sercviced (my neglect) and lastly on a brand new first stage. None of the regulators I have serviced for me have ever crapped out... mostly because I care about me breathing and refuse to take short-cuts. But then any mechanic that can rebuild the GM E2SE carb (The Spaghetti special) and have it work can service ANYTHING any manufacturer can come up with. It ain't rocket science Chester... it's submarine science! :tease:

 

[Genesis]

The only ones I've ever seen on my boat have been caused by dive shops.

I do my own regs, as do a couple of my diving buddies. None of us have ever had a significant failure underwater as a consequence. I happen to believe that there's nobody who cares more than I do about having a working regulator down there, so I'm damn careful.

A friend of mine had a dive shop "overhaul" his regs and they didn't bother to check the LP hose sweges. Less than a month later he's on my boat, turns on the gas, and a LP hose explodes at the swege, which was conveniently behind a hose protector. Inspection of the pieces reveals that the hose was so badly checked that it should have NEVER passed inspection during that annual; there's no way that damage could have possibly occurred in less than a month. Of course, it was not actually inspected, was it? Me don't think so!

Had that happened underwater he might well have been good and screwed, as a blown LP hose is pretty close to the worst case scenario; it will reliably make the OTHER reg unbreathable as the IP in the remaining hoses will be so low as to be useless. (If you don't believe me try it sometime if you have a tank you want to waste on the exercise; just disconnect one of the regs and leave that LP hose open and see if you can breathe off the other one. Bet 'ya can't, or at least not very well, and bet the contents of the tank also disappear at a scary-fast rate!)

Actually, Doc, there's a good argument to be made that Magnuson-Moss and related laws already require the sort of thing you're talking about. I doubt very much that the impact was limited solely to the automotive industry, although the dive industry might try to argue otherwise.

What the dive industry lacks is a group of divers who are sufficiently enraged to engage counsel and make a (literal) federal case out of it, going after both the manufacturers and dive shops.

Hmmmmm.... maybe that needs to happen eh?

 

[redacted]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
Much of the paroting at the LDS is honest. They repeat what they were taught and most of them believe what they say.

Liability is part of the reason that a shop won't teach you to servince a reg. I don't teach a diving class unless I have credientials that say I'm qualified to teach that class. The insurance company won't cover me unless I'm teaching a class that's sanctioned by an agency and has given me the ok to teach it.

I won't now nor have I ever taught reg repair because I have no credentials to do so. I do make students aware of resources like the Oxyhacker books. I don't force them to stay ignorant but I can not qualify them to repair regs or anything else.

Maybe, if he can find enough time between defending himself from all those lawsuits, he can illuminate us on how many copies of his book are in circulation & how many times he has been sued (and particulars if any).

And, yes, I'm sure many of the LDS folks think they are parroting the truth. But that wouldn't make it truth. It would just make it a mistake rather than a lie.