How long does a Reg last?

Might be a stupid question, but I would like to get some input on it.

I have an 11 year old Sherwood Maximus and a 9 year old Brute. They have been serviced on time and taken care of well.

How many years can I expect to keep using them? Indefinitely with regular service or is there a time frame after which they are unsafe? I have an excellent reg service guy that has been maintaining these regs since new.

As long as you can get (or make) parts, there's no limit. My new regs are about 20 years old. I have one that's 51.

I know several people who dive with regs in the 30-40+ year old range quite frequently. Perhaps more the question is--will you be able to get parts (is the manufacturer still going to be around??) 30-40 years from now?

As a technician the number one issue is parts availability for older regs. I have worked on 30 year old Aqualung/USD regs that are very servicable due to excellent support from Aqualung. Some regs are harder to deal with like IDI, since they are out of business servicing their regs will probably be an undertaking in the not to distant future. If your equipment is well maintained and serviced properly a 10-20 year run of diving with it is a good starting point.

Tim the Tech

Aqualung and Scubapro are the companies known for long term parts and service support and it is not uncommon to find a 30 year old regulator from either of those companies coming in for service.

It's probably more common to see a really old Scubapro reg such as a Mk 5 come infor service than it is an Aqualung because the LP port turret on the Mk 5 could be upgraded as more LP ports were needed for octoc's power inflatoes, etc while the Aqualung Conshelf ( and flow by piston designs by both SP and Aqualung) were limited to what they came with.

SP also has followed a process of making new improvements retrofittable into older models. So a late 60's vintage "Adjustable" second stage can be easily upgraded to use the current s-wing poppet used in the G250HP, S550 and S600. It goes along way toward prolonging the useful life of a regulator when you can not only gets parts for it but also technological imporvements that keep it perfroming as well as a current model.

Dacor used to fall in the same category but Mares eliminated parts support for all but current models when they acquired Dacor and basically turned most Dacor regs into paper weights virtually overnight.

I am certain that Poseidon is one of them that can last a long time as long as they have parts around. I know someone who has the Poseidon reg set for about 25 years.

I think a more appropriate question would be "Do older regulators compare favorably with new ones?" Do they breathe was well as say an Apeks ATX 200? Just curious. I could use an IBM XT (some of them still work), but who would want to?

Depends on the reg. Some older regs are excellent, others aren't. There really haven't been any major improvements is regulators in a long time.

I have an old DA Aquamaster that's from the early 60's that is still going strong. My primary reg is an Atomic from 1998 that works as well as when it was new and it's as good or better than any reg on the market today.

I think most regs will last for years as long as they are taken care of properly. I've seen some that were only a few years old that won't see a long life because people don't clean them and have them serviced.

I still use my conshelf 14 as a pony bottle reg. I think Aqua lung's policy is to provide part for about 10 years (give or take a few years) after the model is retired. Since the 14 is still in production, and the Navy still usesit, I expect this reg will outlast me.

My main reg is an atomic I bought in 96. I think that was the 1st year for them. Even though it breaths better than the conshelf, I'd have no problem using the conshelf as my primary. I think it's kind of like the difference between a cadillac and a saturn. As long as both are maintained, they get you where you want to go.