Leaky BCD... need advice

Lets remember that your BC is a piece of life support equipment so unless you are trying to get our of your marriage without having to foot the bill for a divorce buy her a new one.

It sounds like the model in question has no inner bladder and if it is leaking from the seams the weld in those areas are failing. Generally if a weld is poor it is poor everywhere so it is only a mater of time before the entire BC is leaking. No amount a repair will stop the continued break down of the weld.

I'm with Giles, Andy and other posters re: ce4jesus' original post. If this had been a pinhole or tear, I might go along with putting a patch on it. But it's a seam, and you don't mention any local damage or stress that could have caused that specific failure. So even if your repair works, I think you have to consider the risk that the weld/glue may soon fail at other places. This is life support equipment.

(Edit: Since I started this msg, Nemo has just posted making much the same post, but I'll leave this in.)

I also prefer wings that have a bladders inside a zipped on cover, but as I recently found out, they are not foolproof if the quality of construction is poor. Last October, the cover seams on my Halcyon Eclipse wing just started falling apart. Like your bc, only two years old. These are sewn seams, and the material past the seam had not been properly taped or heat treated, so it had just frayed. The cover also started to fall apart near the base of the inflator house. This wing has done a lot of dives, but it's still only two years, and has been well taken care of. Unfortunately, I was on a live-aboard in the middle of the Banda Sea at the start of 30 days back to back trips. It was emergency repair time. I used wet suit glue, duct tape (on the inside), covering all of both seams and strips from a camera cloth (on the outside, just where seams were actually falling apart ) to hold everything together until the end of the trips.

The inner bladder was not directly affected by the cover falling apart, but the wing would have been unusable and unsafe if I had not been able to hold the cover together.

I sent the wing back to Halycon in the US via my dive shop in Hong Kong last November, but I still haven't heard anything back about a replacement wing. That's four months now. That has been surprising to me, as was the early failure of this piece of equipment. Two years ago, when I had a pin hole leak in a Halycon Pioneer wing, they flew a new wing out to me from Florida to Indonesia within a week or so. I used to be a big Halcyon fan, and I have recommended their gear to a lot of people over the years. But I'm afraid this wing was really a piece of junk. And getting no word from anybody about whether and when they will replace the wing for four months basically sucks.

I've purchased a new wing, from OMS, that seems to be verywell constructed. The bladder is very heavy, solid looking material, and the inner seams of the cover are taped and separately sewn to prevent unravelling. I'm not 100% sure about the color (bright red), but I'm learning to live with it. I also still have another Halycon wing, a pioneer (welded, no inner bladder) for my other BP rig that is two years older than the Eclipse which failed, and still is fine. But I'm keeping an eye on it.

Robert Delfs

"Lets remember that your BC is a piece of life support equipment so unless you are trying to get our of your marriage without having to foot the bill for a divorce buy her a new one."

Haha. No we joke all the time about how one day I'll suck on the reg and get a mouth full of saltwater as my wife swims away with dive knife in hand. However, I just purchased her the Seaquest Diva. She seems to like it so we'll give that one a shot. As for the other BC I am currently returning it to the place where it was purchased. They've at least agree to "evaluate it" and give us their opinion.

Why wouldn't consider sending it to the manufacturer for repair? The charge will be nothing to get essentually a newly reconditioned BC. Self repair on BC's is not easy to sustain as has been clearly mentioned here. Heck, they may even simply replace the bladder (if it's bladder based) or the shell for $50-$100 bucks.

Joe

Joe,

I first called the place where I purchased it. They said they would contact the manufacturer on my behalf.

Gary