Posted by Wood on July 23, 2001 at 22:48:03:
In Reply to: Couple of questions to DIR converts out there. posted by Maciek on July 23, 2001 at 10:37:27:
The assembly you were referring to is commonly called a “cable” dump, named for the actual cable that runs through the hose and activates the dump. And yes, I’ve seen it fail.
I’ve seen a small woman pull so hard on that thing she ripped the mouth-piece assembly right off. I watched a football player from the Jacksonville Jaguars rip the entire assembly of the threads where they attach to the BC. I’ve taken over a dozen inflators apart that were not working properly only to find the small metal rod at the end of that cable bent, (stainless by the way), from the efforts of likeminded of the aforementioned. I have had to toss at least 3 BC’s due to the tears in the material around the threads on the BC itself from the stress of divers pulling on that hose.
On one very, very memorable occasion I got to see the entire assembly once again held in someone’s bewildered hand, no longer a voting member of the BC, as they halted their ballistic ascent rather effectively. Upon doing my own ballistic descent and preventing the soon to be death by over-weighting, I was rewarded with a lost mask, a fat lip, groin injuries I do not want to mention here and the mouthpiece of my primary digested by the afflicted. Would have liked to have that 7’ primary then. ‘Course he probably would have strangled me with it. He never did say thanks, must have been my fault somehow.
So, when the folks of the DIR persuasion determined that cable dumps were a bad idea, I was already there and will vote the affirmative on that issue. Panic/stress and a cable dump are bad news.
And yet, I still have one on my sport set-up. Didn’t say I was smart.
Dive safer