Dacor Double hose regulators

[John]

Any one know why the prices for the Dacors dont seem to be as high as the US Divers? This is just something I have noticed on ebay. The dial-a-breaths grab a bit of a higher price but even they dont compare to the USD's. I have both and my Dacor is like a tank compared to my Royal AM

[Ron Hearn]

Hi

Its like comparing Fiat to Toyota no comparison in performance.

Ron

[John]

I clearly understand the performance issue, my Dacor is like trying to breath through a 6' snorkel, but what about collectability? To me there seems to be a whole lot more USD's models built then Dacor or did Dacor flood the market?

[VintageDiverMN]

If you are just going to hang your reg. on the wall, it shouldn't make any differance what brand it is. But if you plan to dive with it the US Divers is the winner. Easy breathing and easy to maintain.

[1969ivan1]

I dove a dacor for years but it has 2 main problems. One it has way too stiff of hoses...also too short. The other is that the 2 dia design makes the reg body stick out further causing it to contact with ur head...sometimes painful... As for performance I felt that it breathed very well and was very reliable.....It also looked very good. I dove my dacor in the Bahamas off of a BLACKBEARD ship...What a battle that was getting "permission" from the dive master. The CAPT...CAPT LOU came to my rescue and told the DM to let me dive it though...He was an old timer and lamented the 2 hose regs of yesteryear...Chalk one up for the VINTAGE DIVER!!!!

[Nemrodalt]

I think that in part it is that there is such good parts supply for the USD equipment compared to everything else. I suspect that too is because the USD regulators were the most popular and they were the most popular because they out performed other brands like Dacor. It seems that of commonly available regulators only theTrieste compared with the Royal in performance and therefore they bring the highest prices except for the occasional oddity. Nemrod

[SeaRat]

1969ivan1 said:

I dove a dacor for years but it has 2 main problems. One it has way too stiff of hoses...also too short. The other is that the 2 dia design makes the reg body stick out further causing it to contact with ur head...sometimes painful... As for performance I felt that it breathed very well and was very reliable.....It also looked very good...

I agree wholeheartedly with 1969Ivan1 on this one. Dacor double hose regulators did have those two drawbacks, but they were pretty good regulators.

The Dacor Model One (Original Unit) Dial-A-Breath regulator (1950s to 1962) was quite advanced for its time. It was arguably better than the U.S. Divers Co. competitor, the DA Aqualung. I liked the fact that the hoses would hold up much better than the USD equivalent too, and that the mushroom valve for exhalation never needed to be replaced. Breathing of this original unit was also very good--it had a venturi that could be dampered by a vane (the "Dial-A-Breath" feature).

When Dacor came out with it's revision, the R-4, they made a few mistakes that took the advantage in breathing characteristics away from Dacor, and let USD and AMF Voit take advantage of newer regs (DA Aquamaster, Royal Aquamaster, Mistral, AMF Voit Trieste II, etc.).

The problem, which I diagnosed on an R-4 that I built up myself from an Original Model (I bought the parts, and put it together myself while in college), involved the Demand Valve Lever. They put a "U" in the lever, and made this the sliding part instead of secondary lever (which is the sliding part in the USD Mistral). I actually took a hammer to mine, and straightened this lever out. The result was a much better breathing regulator. I think it would be a rather easy fix for someone else with an R-4 to try, to manufacture a new lever without the "U" and try it. My preliminary pool tests with it showed that it did improve the breathing characteristics quite a bit.

Unfortunately, I gave my regulator to a Dacor representative, who was to take it back to Dacor and ask them to fix the problem--they "lost" my regulator. They did make good on that, by sending me a Dacor Pacer regulator to replace it (it was a prototype, I found out later, as the exhalation holes were drilled and circular, rather than the stamped out versions later sold).

Getting back to the R-4, the hoses were not only too short, but the inhalation/exhalation valves too narrow for optimum breathing characteristics. I continued to use the R-4 for years (I gave it to the Dacor rep in the 1980s), and am including a photo of me in Clear Lake using the one I built.

I think that, as a collector's item, it may not be as widely sought simply because it doesn't have the Cousteau name on it.

The R-4 and the Original Unit were Made in the USA, servicable by anyone with a pliers, screwdriver and a few wrenches, and very, very rugged units. They were used in the Great Lakes region for ice dives, and used by choice by Fred Roberts during his earlier years. He describes modifying one to have a tube runnig from it's second stage housing to a camera housing to pressurize the underwater camera housing for deep diving in the Great Lakes in his book, Basic Scuba.

Photo by Bruce Higgins

John

[dj793]

I've got an R4 and yes it does not compare to the breathing of my DA Aquamaster, Would you be interested in fixing mine? My e-mail is [e-mail]

[SeaRat]

dj793,

I have scads of projects of my own right now, and do not have either the time or the machine shop equipment to make a new top lever for your R-4. Also, when I worked on mine, it was in 1973;) So right now I cannot undertake this work.

What I would encourage you to do is to get skematics on the R-4, and dive into it yourself. There are several things you can do to enhance it. These are:

--reset the interstage pressure to optimum.
--ensure the non-return valves are replaced in the mouthpiece with new ones (ask Dan, and I think he can get them for you).
--if you wish, try your USD hose/mouthpiece system on your Dacor R-4.
--if you have the older, thick LP diaphragms, they should be replaced with the newer ones, which were wonderful (soft, flexible).

If your really want to have fun with it, have a new top lever (demand valve lever) made by a machine shop for the R-4, and replace the original. The original one with the U in it produced a decreasing leverage force as the breathing effort increased. It's like a child sliding down a slide; at the bottom there is very little drop off the slide. In the same way, with the "U" sliding down the secondary lever, the amount of leverage it can exert decreases. Most regulators were designed differently (Mistral, Royal Mistral, Nemrod Snark III, Healthways Scuba/Scuba Delux, the Dacor Dial-A-Breath Original Regulator), with the secondary lever sliding against the bottom of the demand lever, and gaining leverage as the breathing effort increased.

I almost bought a Dacor Original model, and I can tell you that this regulator had a venturi that would not stop when you stopped breathing. I could pull my mouth away, and it would continue to flow until I put my mouth back against it. My current regulators (AMF Voit Trieste II and Sportsways Hydro Twin) do the same.

As I said above, I would encourage you to look into this regulator. It is an easy one to take apart and put together.

John

[Bryan]

Contact Jerry Powell at [e-mail] Jerry worked for years in R&D and service for Dacor and I'm sure he can fix you right up.......He is a super busy guy so give him plenty of time to reply to you.