Post Your Latest Gear Failure!

[Chugwhump]

Yesterday....
The high pressure hose to my SPG began leaking at the high crimp as soon as I cracked the valve on my tank while outbound on my regular Six-Pack dive trip.
I grabbed one of the two new ones that I carry in my "Save-The-Dive-Kit" and swapped that out.

Then about the time I stood up from the bench and was going to enter the water,
the internal #012 "O-Ring" on the interior stem of the DIN fitting male stem at the back of my reg starting leaking.
So....
I told my buds to go without me, and once again reached into the "Save-The-Dive-Kit" and dug out a new O-Ring and swapped that out.

I was about 5-10 minutes late joining my buds and the captain dumped me on the flag.
I went in negative, descended onto my buds and hit my BCD inflator and leveled out near my pals at the end of my dive bombing run.
And then.....
I noticed that my power inflator was leaking, and my BCD was slowly filling with air, repeatedly.

So......
I disconnected the inflator hose, and huffed, and puffed as needed into the inflator hose,
until I got back on the boat and once again went to the STDK and pulled out my spare inflator hose assembly and swapped it out with the leaky one.

Then.......
We dropped in for dive number two on the day, and things were from an equipment failure standpoint, uneventful.

I found a brandie new "Green Bugger Stick", a slightly corroded JBL pole spear, and a few coke bottles.

When I got back up on the boat, I was told that we were down to one engine as we had blown a hose/line from the oil cooler into the engine, and the afternoon trip that I was scheduled for would not be running as it would take too long to obtain the line and swap out the hose for the afternoon trip.

So.....
I reached once again into my "Save-The-Dive-Kit" and grabbed a Snickers Bar....

And called it a DAMN DAY!

Chug
Had some nice dives yesterday.

 

[MichigandiverJon]

Last summer a couple weeks before our usual trip to Thunder Bay Michigan my Cobra II died on a test dive at a local lake. It would work fine at room temps, but if it got over 80*f on the surface it started self diving. Tried it again attempting to keep it cool prior to entry and used a Mosquito back up. But it just got worse and started wigging out on ascent. Perused Ebay and got another Cobra with only 40 dives on it. Now this year I just got a Petrel2. I'm thinking the new Cobra's days are numbered now too but for different reasons.

 

[TSandM]

The latest gear failures I've dealt with weren't mine. I offered to take a new diver out for his second attempt at a Puget Sound dive. The first one had been unsuccessful, in part due to an autoinflating BC, but he had had the BC in to be serviced, and didn't expect any further problems with it. When he assembled his gear, I tried the inflator, and I couldn't even get the inflate button to MOVE. By placing it against the tailgate of the truck and leaning on it, I got it moving, but it initially stuck on. Cycling it several times seemed to take care of the problem, and it was then moving easily and seemed to be shutting off. However, by the time we got in the water, it was clear that it was leaking and inflating the bladder. Since I didn't have a spare BC with me, that meant no dive, but we could at least work on his weighting. We disconnected the LP inflator hose, and emptied the wing, and then worked on getting him neutral, but since I don't normally carry a snorkel and I hadn't bothered to put on my dive gear to stand in waist-deep water, I kept having to bend over and hold my breath to watch him. So I told him I was going to grab his octo and breathe that while I was watching, which I did . . . and that resulted in a cascade of bubbles from his first stage, due to the fact that the octo hose had come loose. Unfortunately, in standing up and holding the hose to figure out where the leak was, I must have twisted it just enough to slice the o-ring, because even after depressurizing the reg and hand-tightening the hose, it was still leaking steadily. We STILL managed to get the weight check done, and the fellow a little bit of swimming around in three feet of water, before we called it a day.

 

[boulderjohn]

Now I will indeed post my latest gear failure, and it was a doozy considering total effect.

I was with two other divers, each of whom had rented tiny economy cars in Mexico. I did not have a car of my own. We loaded all out gear and double tanks before heading off into the jungle with the plan of diving a cave pretty far back in. The road was extremely rough, far rougher than those cars were designed for. As the passenger in one of the cars, I ended up walking a good part of the way to keep the car from bottoming out as it passed over rocks and ruts. It took well over an hour to get to our destination, and when we reached it, there was someone there to greet us--the guy who took our fees for diving the cave.

We walked into the jungle to scout out the site, a small pool at the base of a cliff. We suited up and set up our doubles. We got everything set up and started to walk. BAM! It was like a gun going off next to my left ear. The high pressure hose leading to my SPG had ruptured. It was almost completed severed. It was completely unusable. Sure, I could have done the dive without an SPG and probably been OK, but I'm not that kind of a guy. I could have driven back to the dive shop and gotten a new high pressure hose, but getting undressed, driving an hour out of the jungle, getting a new hose, driving an hour back, setting up again...not going to happen. So I just sat around the jungle for the rest of the day while my buddies did their dives.

 

[Mubble Bubble]

My fiancé booked a trip to Bonne Terre Mines for us last February (she also like beer and watching hockey so yup she's a keeper). We were gearing up for the last dive of the weekend and she asked me to clip off my GoPro to her BCD. She loves taking it along for dive so I clipped it off on her chest D-ring. We giant strided off the dock and did a surface swim to the drop zone.

It was the 5th dive wet of the weekend for her and a bit of a long slow swim so by the time we got there her teeth were chattering. She opted to thumb the dive at the surface which I couldn't blamed (I'm a drysuit diver). The mine staff ended up sneaking her onto one of the boat and a walking tours so it worked out great. She had fun on the tours and I had a great dive.

However, when I got dockside she had a sheepish look on her face. It turns out that the GoPro had gone missing somewhere between when she left the dive group and when she got out of her gear. She and one of the staff had looked all over the dock for it but to no avail. We summized that it was likely came loose and was somewhere at the bottom of the mine. I ended up blaming it on my clip job (Hey we're not married yet ....plus I wanted to upgrade anyway )

 

[Gilchristz]

Brand new spg flooded 1st dive of the week. Not really a big deal as i had a spare with me

 

[buddhasummer]

Two years ago on a liveaboard in the Similins my HP/SPG spool gave out . It was a new spool. I always carry spares so no biggy. In fact other than a collapsed diaphragm the only gear failures I've ever had have been spools. At one point I went through three in as many weeks. Glad they are only pennies. I did lose a very expensive light once but that was user error and not a gear failure, more of a diver failure.

 

[TONY CHANEY]

Last failure...hum more like diver error. Yesterday we were diving the forest at Lake Jocassee with scooters. I exceeded to max rated depth of the scooter (we hit 135') or had sand or something on the o ring. It flooded. Thanks God it is a Mako. It continued to run as normal but was very heavy. Just dumped out the water and let it dry.

 

[lnjohn]

I went for a beach dive to try out part of my latest craigslist purchase. I was real excited to use the Atomic ST1 regulator and grabbed an octo from another reg I had at home. I also was using a Cobalt 1, post recall, dive computer that was part of the same craigslist purchase. The Cobalt down arrow button was not working at the surface, but I decided that I really didn't need that function while underwater and continued with the dive. I descended started the dive and was enjoying the easy breathing of my new, 1 year old, ST1 regulator at a depth of around 25 feet. I descended to 35 feet and noticed air leaking out of my Octo. I switched regs and could not get the octo to stop leaking, so I decided to continue the dive using the octo as my primary. Bottom time was 45 minutes with max depth of 50 feet, which is about 10-15 minutes short of normal, but I did not let my octo ruin my dive. The octo is now on ebay with full disclosure that it was leaking on its last dive. The dive computer has been sent in for repairs with the original receipt. The tech at the shop tried replacing the magnets, but that did not work. Fortunately, it is still under mfr warranty. I just received back from Atomic a complete B1 to B2 conversion and am trying to decide if I want to use the B2 2nd stage as my Octo. Or whether I should keep it and have a dedicated DIN and Yoke setup.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I've filmed a few of mine. one is kinda old now and the other is more recent.

[video=youtube;Bap2PxetarQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bap2PxetarQ[/video]


[video=youtube;gl4YR3lhmyU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4YR3lhmyU&index=1&list=PLjC5PqdqiSg5Qt1W FZ5YKZeUDlxPAHJW_[/video]