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Many months ago I purchased a Farallon MKII on Ebay and with two new batteries it ran in my pool so I took it to the Ocean. First real dive it died out after about ten minutes and when I opened her up there was smoke. The pictures tell most of the story, Somebody had taken the time to repaint the body, but left the guts original or maybe replaced the seal and such. Then decided to add a few pounds of grease to the motor area for no good reason. The motor overheated, the wires melted and all things went to toast.
I cleaned out the grease and sent the parts to Curt at DPV repair who worked miracles on it. He found a couple of parts we needed throgh his network of friends, had the motor rewound, replaced or fabricated more parts and found a place to custom fabricate a single shaft seal as well.
I'm very pleased with how the DPV turned out and have killed a couple battery sets in the pool playing with it, and it runs like new. I wouldn't recomend for anyone to try to rebuild one of these oldies, but if you want good work try DPV Repair.
Mine is fast, up there with a quick Tekna DV-3x (supposedly military) that I have and a bit faster than an Apollo AV-1 or AV-2. Handling is easy, I wish it had an adjustable pitch prop or variable speed, but it's just a minor inconvenience, pulsing the trigger works fine. I ditched the light and had the second switch wired as a trigger as well, much nicer for "getting there."
Battery life falls short of the modern scooters, but not surprising with all the heat it gives off. I get about 25 minutes of good trigger time off of a pair of 18ah batteries. That may sound short, but since you are not on the trigger all the time, it's good for about 40 min of play time, which is comparable to the Apollo's. I just got a pair of 22ah batteries to play with and they should make me happy.
All in all, it's one of my favorite scooters and I own six different models. Handling is good, pull is comfortable, speed is good. Glad I got it and filled my childhood dream of owning one. My advice to anyone is if you can get one up and running on the cheap, it's a great scooter,but if the repairs are extensive, like on mine, ditch it and get a used Mako for better value.
thanks for the reply, sounds like the MK II will be a nice machine, Curt is replacing the reed switches and the shaft seal, I cant wait to get it back. I have not purchased batteries yet so let me know how they 22ah batteries work out. I appreciate vintage dive equipment so this will be a nice addition to my double hose rig Aloha john
The 22ah work out fine, they weigh about four pounds total more than a pair of 18ah. (27.8lb to 23.8lb by my scale) with puts me about 2lb neg in salt water which is fine by me. I haven't run them yet for duration, but I've used the same one's in my Tekna and picked up about 20% more run time, so I'd expect the same here.
Very cool restoration. I love the blue finish. I also cannot believe the ton of grease (?) added to the aft portion of the scooter. Why would anyone do that? Thanks for sharing.
Very cool restoration. I love the blue finish. I also cannot believe the ton of grease (?) added to the aft portion of the scooter. Why would anyone do that? Thanks for sharing.
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Certainly to hide some vibration in the motor, the same as adding sawdust to a manual transmission oil to make it run "smooth".
The seller is a crook and the OP should denounce him on Ebay.
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Originally Posted by jcarpini
