Inflator completely detached from bc - help please

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castaways01

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Location
Roatan - www.castaways-cove.com
# of dives
I just don't log dives
Hi. The inflator hose detached completely from my Aqua Lung BC. OK, I know this BC is few years old but its been used just a handful of times (I usually use a different one) and not abused in any way. It was properly taken care of. Is there anyone repairing this type of thing? I contacted Aqua Lung Service via their website and they say it is heat welded and they will not attempt to repair it. Posting a photo of what happened to it on a dive last week in Roatan. Can anyone help? Thanks for any and all replies!
 

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(sorry to hear------but)............lol, that happened to the 1st BC I owned, a Dacor in about '00---it was 'only' 15 YO with about 1200 dives on it...luckily it happened AFTER a 2 tank on Roatan when coming off the dive boat @ BIBR's pier........I showed it to a couple people(DM & my dive buddy) & walked straight to a garbage can & deposited it there.....Hope your results are better than mine.....
 
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If you post in the DIY section, you may get some help on how to repair it yourself.
 
I recently had this same problem with an older BC where the junky plastic that was once common for shoulder ports became brittle with age and broke, but the rest of the jacket is in excellent condition. Here's what I've found so far.

You may be able to find someone to fix this for you (I haven't taken this route), or you can try yourself. On that latter score, there's good news and bad news, depending on what size your port is. I'm going to say there are two main port sizes, though there could be more. Unfortunately, I think you have the larger sized port, like I do.

There is a replacement small-sized port readily available online for under $10. You need the inner and outer port parts. You'd have to carefully remove, or at least trim and smooth down, the portion of the old port that's still welded to your jacket. After that, the inner port fits inside the jacket, and the jacket material around the hole is sandwiched between the inner and outer port halves. A special tool is needed to screw the two halves tightly together (again, I believe there are two sizes, for the two different port sizes), and you might need a little sealant on one or both sides of the jacket fabric to make an airtight seal.

Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a similar version of the large port available. Going from memory, the small ports are about 1.75" OD across the male threads, the large ports are a little over 2".

If you need the larger port, here is a good, but expensive ($80) repair solution.

However, if you have the larger size port, don't want to use the Scuba-Fix solution, but still want to tackle this yourself, it can still probably be done. I say "probably" because I've obtained the two-part large port, but haven't yet tried to fix the jacket. It turns out, some vendors used two-part large ports on their (mostly older, that I can tell) BCs. Some of the older SeaQuest (the one I obtained), and I believe SeaTec jackets used these removable two-part ports. You'd have to scour eBay to find one, and they are not the most common variant or the easiest to spot. I had to contact several sellers and ask for pics and that they inspect the port, before I found a style that had the two-part port. The good news on that front is that the separate inner bladder used in that older BC tended to rot as well, so you're dealing with a seller that has a mostly useless item.

As a further comment on the practical difficulties, it's quite possible you'll find that even with the larger two-part port, which is nevertheless the correct size port for your inflator assembly, the flange on the inner half does not overlap adequately with the jacket material (once the old port remnants are trimmed away) to make a good seal, and you'll have to glue a piece of fabric or other material to the existing hole, into which you've cut a slightly smaller diameter hole for the inner port half. In eyeballing mine, that's how it looked to me. If adding additional material is needed, you may have already realized that simply using that effort to adapt your BC to the smaller sized port, would allow use of the more readily available replacement port. Of course, you'd also need to swap to the matching inflator hose assembly.

All in all, unless the jacket still has high value to you, or you like these kinds of projects, you're probably better off to just write it off.
 
Good luck and please post how it works out! Scuba Fix appears to sell directly on eBay ($85 to US), and there are a couple of YouTube videos about the product. I've been watching eBay for a year or so, and the product just never shows up at a lower price. I just saw this SB thread with a couple of satisfied customers as well. Probably this winter I'll get back to fixing that BC. The jacket is in unused condition, other than that crumbled port. I haven't tried removing the remnants of the old port yet, not sure how easily that will go.
 
Hi. The inflator hose detached completely from my Aqua Lung BC. OK, I know this BC is few years old but its been used just a handful of times (I usually use a different one) and not abused in any way. It was properly taken care of. Is there anyone repairing this type of thing? I contacted Aqua Lung Service via their website and they say it is heat welded and they will not attempt to repair it. Posting a photo of what happened to it on a dive last week in Roatan. Can anyone help? Thanks for any and all replies!

My personal preference would be to contact AL again and explain that if they did a proper job heat-welding it, that it would not have separated and that this is an obvious manufacturing defect.

A proper weld will destroy the fabric instead of neatly coming apart as shown in your picture.

flots.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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