Interesting regulator article in dan's alert diver

[divezonescuba]

The story has to do with a regulator housing that sheared of at the hose fitting.

Anyone able to identify the regulator in question from the photos of the same model in the article?

 

[buddhasummer]

The story has to do with a regulator housing that sheared of at the hose fitting.

Anyone able to identify the regulator in question from the photos of the same model in the article?

Do you have a link to the article? Cheers.

 

[RainPilot]

I believe it's this one
Alert Diver | A Free-Flowing Failure


FWIW I suspect that the cause of the cracks is not using two spanners when tightening or loosening the reg from the hose. Common issue, I did it till recently when I found out it's a bad idea.

 

[claymore]

Some of the older AquaLung plastic 2nd stages, especially the yellow ones, were prone to cracking where the hose attaches.

 

[AFdivedoc]

The reg in the article looks like one of the early plastic Aqualung octos.

I was on Bonaire a few years ago, and went off the back of the boat. My wife was having some equipment problems, so I helped her at the surface then we submerged. I got a bit close to the fantail and another diver went off the boat nearly on top of me. I never saw them, only felt the impact as the bottom of their tank hit my first stage. The high pressure hose snapped off flush with the first stage. I made a slow ascent and got back on the boat. According to my computer, it took about 3 minutes to get back to the ladder, and the last of the gas was hissing out as I climbed it. I've heard it can take 10-20 minutes to lose gas through the small high pressure orifice, but it certainly wasn't true in my case. The wife got a couple of pics of the free flow.

There were no problems breathing the reg on ascent, by the way.

 

[buddhasummer]

The reg in the article looks like one of the early plastic Aqualung octos.

I was on Bonaire a few years ago, and went off the back of the boat. My wife was having some equipment problems, so I helped her at the surface then we submerged. I got a bit close to the fantail and another diver went off the boat nearly on top of me. I never saw them, only felt the impact as the bottom of their tank hit my first stage. The high pressure hose snapped off flush with the first stage. I made a slow ascent and got back on the boat. According to my computer, it took about 3 minutes to get back to the ladder, and the last of the gas was hissing out as I climbed it. I've heard it can take 10-20 minutes to lose gas through the small high pressure orifice, but it certainly wasn't true in my case. The wife got a couple of pics of the free flow.

There were no problems breathing the reg on ascent, by the way.

View attachment 411401 View attachment 411402

A blown LP hose is a concern, I think from memory, they can empty a "full" tank in around 80 seconds.

 

[diversteve]

I've heard it can take 10-20 minutes to lose gas through the small high pressure orifice, but it certainly wasn't true in my case.

That should be because the orifice was in the hose so likely was the snapped off part.

 

[AFdivedoc]

That should be because the orifice was in the hose so likely was the snapped off part.
View attachment 411404

Actually the part of the fitting with the orifice was retained in the HP port. Also, the reg itself (my long-lived Scubapro MK10), has a small orifice in the HP port (see photo). I'm guessing there was some additional leakage around the threads because the O-ring on the damaged hose fitting was gone. I switched to a spare reg for the rest of the trip. The MK10 developed an unacceptable amount of IP creep after the incident, and I had to take it out of service. It is now a paperweight with a good story attached.

 

[axxel57]

The 2nd in the article looks for me like one of the old US Diver 2nds from the 80's.
I discarted two of them having cracks in the plastic around the inlet opening.
Both didn't showed problems even concerning watertight integrity and worked normal, I didn't put them back on the regs anyway........

 

[Malpaso]

Metal fitting connected to a plastic fitting. Recipe for disaster.