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Soaking it like that is overkill and risks leakage through the dust cap.
There is no reason to take the dust cap off during drying.
Do you have any reason for your personal practice other than it is your personal practice? Why is a multiple hour soak necessary? Describe the parts of the regulator that benefit from this.Disagree with these last 2 points. If the dust cap will keep water out during a 5-10 minute rinse, it's going to keep water out indefinitely. I prefer to leave my regs in a soak for hours if not overnight, if it's the last trip of the vacation and the regs are going to sit for months or longer.
I always remove the dust cap when drying and storing just in case any water happened to get in there so the first stage can dry out.
Do you have any reason for your personal practice other than it is your personal practice?
Note that if you don't soak the regulator for hours, you don't have to do anything special to dry it out.
What parts are those?No particular reason, just figure why not. I rinse them with a hose, drop them in the rinse bucket, and go do other things. Since it's the end of a vacation that usually means packing, grabbing something to eat, etc. Why not give the freshwater a chance to really soak into those parts that might not be reachable with a quick rinse and be sure all the salt water is gone?
Long term soaking allows water to seep slowly into any less than perfect seal of the dust cap. A targeted hose spray gets the water into the places that need cleaning and not into the places that don't. I got this warning from an Aqualung representative who was in the dive shop where I worked. He was commenting on the new cleaning tanks they had just created, and he told us not to have our students soak the regulators in them for that reason.Are you suggesting that regulators soaked for a few minutes are "less wet" than regulators that are soaked for a few hours?
Long term soaking allows water to seep slowly into any less than perfect seal of the dust cap. A targeted hose spray gets the water into the places that need cleaning and not into the places that don't. I got this warning from an Aqualung representative who was in the dive shop where I worked. He was commenting on the new cleaning tanks they had just created, and he told us not to have our students soak the regulators in them for that reason.
What parts are those?
Long term soaking allows water to seep slowly into any less than perfect seal of the dust cap. A targeted hose spray gets the water into the places that need cleaning and not into the places that don't. I got this warning from an Aqualung representative who was in the dive shop where I worked. He was commenting on the new cleaning tanks they had just created, and he told us not to have our students soak the regulators in them for that reason.