Dacor regs

[kevinj1]

I have Dacor regs and octo that are 15 years old. They are in great condition, but need to be serviced. If they pass service inspection, are they still safe to dive with? I trust them soo much, but I know age of regs is something I must consider.

[thesmoothdome]

Mares owns the Dacor name now, so I'd assume kits are still available for service. If its serviced, it should be good to use. There are a lot of people who dive "vintage gear." I don't think a 15 year old reg is too old at all if it's properly serviced by a qualified technician.

[cummings66]

My LDS told me that the old (read good) Dacor regs were killed off by Mares ceasing the supply of rebuild kits. In fact there used to be a trade in program to get you to switch out the old Dacor regs for newer versions. I don't know that the parts will be easy to get if my LDS is correct.
<DIV>That could be what he told us as a reason to not buy Dacor for all I know.</DIV>

[kevinj1]

that is interesting--please let me know if you hear anything else about that.

[thesmoothdome]

Perhaps we can get this topic moved to the Mares mfg. section and get an answer from the experts?

[kevinj1]

that works big time, BUT, should I start a new thread or is their a way to move this whole topic over?

[thesmoothdome]

Larry or Joe should be able to move the whole thread over. Now all we have to do is get their attention *waves arms*

[kevinj1]

LARRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
<DIV>JOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE</DIV>
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<DIV>I hope they heard me---lol</DIV>

[ScubaToys Larry]

Ok guys... here's the story on this topic.. And special thanks to thesmoothdome for pointing this out to me. (By the way... why did you pick that name?[img]smileys/smiley36.gif[/img])

Anyway... Dacor was a pretty good company back in the day. But really, they ran into a few major problems. Their design team started making things more and more complex, to where they had about a gillion parts in some of their regs, and every time they came out with a new reg, they would design it so it required all new internal parts. Companies like Zeagle have learned from this, and the rebuild kit for any of their regs is interchangeable...

Anyway, due to the economy, their marketing etc... they started slipping in sales, and in short order, they were in a huge financial hurt. One thing they did near the end was sell off all of their tooling for the older regs. Then, on the verge of bankruptcy, Mares, (actually Head Sports - the parent company of Mares, and also the Head sports of tennis fame) came in and bought their name and all remaining stock and parts.

After doing so, they discovered that Dacor had stripped the company to the bone before the sale, so mares basically had a name and not much else. At that point - to retool in order to make parts for regulators that in the beginning were not well designed, and there are not that many still in the market, would be a ridiculously expensive venture with no return on investment.

So the bad news is, unless some guy sitting in a little dive shop somewhere has a pile of parts that fits your particular regulator, there are no rebuild parts available.

Mares realized this was not the best situation, and some people were really soured by the Dacor name - so they scaled down that line and re-focused their energy on new Mares products instead. To attempt to appease the folks that had old dacor regs, they ran a trade in program where you could send in your old regulator and get a credit toward a new mares reg.

When you look at the cost of buying the parts, and paying the labor to have the old reg serviced - it was not much more to end up with a brand new mares reg with 15 years better technology, and no parts availability issues.

That program is outlined here: http://www.scubatoys.com/store/regs/dacortradeup.pdf

As you will see, that program ended September of last year, but for any of the members on our board - I will still honor it, and pay the difference out of our pocket as Mares no longer gives us credit on these.

I hope that explains the situation, and if anyone wants to talk to us about a specific situation, please don't hesitate to call or pm me personally.

And if you guys ever have a thread like this going that you cannot get an answer to from our other members, please, as thesmoothdome did, drop me a PM and I'll have the answer - or get it for you.

[thesmoothdome]

Wow! Now that was a response! Thanks for the clarification. Wish I had an old Dacor reg lying around. That's really quite a generous offer.
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<DIV>BTW, the avatar pic is me in a bald wig. I really have long flowing locks down to the middle of my back .Ok...maybe not, but I remember what hair is like. I think. </DIV>