Reg Service

[deepblueme]

No offence taken.
My point is take care of your gear and it will(should) take care of you.
If its a 199.00 Aqualung, that topo' the line Atomic or that e-bay find so be it.
Ease of breathing does cost more no matter how you slice it.

As an x-shop, repair person/sales/mgr. my time is worth money as is yours.
We set our repair prices to be the same as if you sent it to usd/tusa/sp/whom ever to be fixed and would do pretrip checks on our customers gear N/C.

I would also tell people that didn't want to service their gear "don't go deeper than you want to swim up if you lose track of your buddy and have a failure."
In 20+plus years I saw alot of failure and a lot of cobwebs in 2nd stages.

 

[PvtStash]

I'm not sure how other manufacturer's do it , but I believe Aqualung suggests an "overhaul" servicing every Other year, with an "inspection" in-between. I'm guessing the inspection year costs alot less than the overhaul years... should help offset long term costs tho' eh?

 

[Stu S.]

I just finished paying $88 to have an Oceanic Alpha 7, octo and gauge serviced. Two years old, 90 dives, and the first rebuild. The whole set new would cost about $225 from Leisure Pro.

What if... I had sold it on eBay and bought new? Do you think it would have sold for $137? If it did, there would be no economy in the rebuild.

 

[b1gcountry]

Ease of breathing does cost more no matter how you slice it.

As an x-shop, repair person/sales/mgr. my time is worth money as is yours.
We set our repair prices to be the same as if you sent it to usd/tusa/sp/whom ever to be fixed and would do pretrip checks on our customers gear N/C.

I don't consider $60 to be overly expensive for labor to rebuild a regulator, I think that is a very reasonable price, especially for a complicated Diaphragm regulator. My only concern over the price of rebuilds is the parts, and most manufacturers are the ones jacking that up sky high.

Tom

 

[b1gcountry]

I just finished paying $88 to have an Oceanic Alpha 7, octo and gauge serviced. Two years old, 90 dives, and the first rebuild. The whole set new would cost about $225 from Leisure Pro.

What if... I had sold it on eBay and bought new? Do you think it would have sold for $137? If it did, there would be no economy in the rebuild.

BINGO!

 

[redacted]

$60 to service a regulator is quite reasonable if a good job gets done. Unfortunately, the thoroughness and quality of the work done sometimes is severly lacking, but the price is the same. Smart buyers on ebay should be looking to save at least 50% over the cost of new so it probably would not pay to simply replace every 2 years rather than service unless you can find a less picky buyer.

 

[b1gcountry]

I've seen Scuba gear sell on ebay for more than you can get one for at leisure pro...

 

[scubafanatic]

Can't completly be sure,since I can't see your reg.and it's very unlikely you'll stop by and show me
But it sounds like that when they did the upgrade they forgot to put in the shimms from your old piston up to the new one.That should be the reason the IP is low.

Don't have the shimm colorcodes with me but any Atomics dealer can tell/sell you the right shimms ,to rease the IP.


cheers,
Evert

Hi Evert,
well, after botched service #1 at shop # 1 (which I discovered after dive # 1 on trip # 1 ) I returned home and had it examined by shop # 2, which discovered the low IP and installed shims ( 3 I believe ) to boost the IP to about 135 psi. Shop # 2 didn't do a full annual, and they proclaimed it 'dive-ready'.....so I'd say shop # 1 and shop # 2 each did half-an-annual. Then after dive # 1 on trip # 2, I was still unhappy with the reg's performance, and once again switched to a back-up reg for the rest of the trip. My theory is perhaps the ambient chamber isn't properly fully packed with christolube, and thus ambient water pressure isn't being fully transmitted, leading to inferior performance.....and the owner of shop # 2, while a highly respected, long-time Atomic dealer, disapproves of using Christolube at all (claims it reduces reg performance) so now I'm deciding who I might visit as shop # 3, or go back to shop # 2...not sure yet. ( shop # 1 has been sold to new owners, so I can't take it back there to be reworked, and I don't know if I trust whoever is there repairing Atomic regs).

Karl

 

[scubafanatic]

The same thing applies to annual aircraft inspections. A lot of parts get messed with and it only takes one small error to cause problems. Over the years I have discovered a few post annual inspection problems - the pre-flight discovery that the aileron cables reversed on a V-35 Bonanza (I had to look about 3 times to really believe what I was seeing, rather than what I expected to see), an inflight trim problem on a Cherokee, a short and semi-exciting flight, and the in flight loss of oil pressure in a Seneca due to a tool being left on top of the oil cooler resulting in a precautionary landing on one engine - and a priceless "oh my God I can't believe I did that" look of horror on the face of the mechanic when we removed the cowling and saw the cause of the problem.

Regulators are less complex with a lot less to go wrong and the most common failures tend to be open failures resulting in very minor to large free flows rather than a failure to deliver gas, but it is still worth a thorough pre-dive check and it does not hurt to have service work done well in advance of a major trip to ensure any minor probems occur on a local dive where the local shop can make any adjustments required without ruining your $2000 dive trip.

...more often than not, the only way to discover failures is actually on a dive trip, at depth, under exertion/stress.........my Atomic appeared fine breathing off a tank in my garage, it also appeared fine at shallow depth with no current....but unfortunately I found out the hard way, in the ocean, at depth, swimming against a significant current, that my reg was substandard in performance...no way to really test for that at home unfortunately.

Karl

 

[redacted]

Air bubbles in the ambient chamber should have no effect on performance. They will compress and the piston will still accurately sense the ambient pressure. It will accelerate the loss/contamination of any ambient chamber filler.

Any regulator may feel like it is not breathing easily when you overexert yourself. But if you are sure your Atomic is not performaing as well as your backup reg, you may want to send it off to a good service center.