Apeks Inflator & Silicon sealant

[thehuntsman81]

I have been suffering from severe dampness in my membrane drysuit and after a few tests I am pretty cetain it is the apeks rotating inflator.

Anyhow I stripped the inflator this evening and to my surprise found a mass of silicon sealant had been used on the wet side of the suit and around the threads of the inflator body. I was knocking it off in chunks! In my mind this didn't look right and my thinking is that this was creating a void somewhere around the seal.

So I stripped away all the silicon and reassembled. Kitchen sink tests are looking good however I am worried that on Saturday morning I am gonna get to depth and find I am soaked rather than just damp!

What are peoples thoughts on this? Is silicon sealant required when you have a nice rubber gasket glued onto the suit? What is the most common procedure for installing Apeks inflators? Anyone got very wet cos they never used sealant?

Any advice appreciated

[Moz]

Silicon grease has been recommended by Apeks.

Sealant shouldn't be needed, is it a new suit?

[thehuntsman81]

Suit was new from diveshow last October

Only started using it after xmas and only in anger over the last few weeks

Silicon grease would seem more appropriate to me. Just wondering of the dump is also the same?

[edward]

My ND suit had the dump valve glued in. Once i'd broken it to get it out, the new one went in with a tiny smear of grease. It didn't leak.

Unfortunately, the rest of the suit was so crap and leaky that eventually i gave up getting it fixed and bought a SeaSkin.

[thehuntsman81]

Finally got the dump valve off after some gentle persuassion last night and there was no silicon sealant to be found!

Cleaned up and applied silicon grease to dump and inflator collar/threads. Found that I could get both of them much tighter with the grease applied.

Just cross my fingers for Saturday... maybe keep an eye out on the "I learn't diving from that" page!