After a successful two hour dive following Marcus around Vobster whilst he photographed the walls around the 22 m area the afternoons dive didn’t go so smoothly. Feeling a bit scootered out after the mornings dive we jumped back in anyway and whizzed around this time unencumbered by camera equipment . Nearing the end of the dive my scooter started to make strange noises, the normal Aquazepp racket had taken a turn for the worse and didn’t sound healthy at all so I swam it the short distance back to the entrance point, pondering what might be causing it. I initially suspected that the motor might have come loose on its mounts and the gears might not have been meshing optimally.
Once back at home I had a look in the tail cone but found the motor still firmly bolted into place, instead I could see that the large drive gears teeth had partially stripped. No prop jams or other issues had been encountered on the dives so why this happened is a bit of a mystery, old age perhaps ? The drive gear attached to the motor shaft was fine, this is only a few years old.
This happened in February 2022 and writing this is June I still haven’t bought a replacement part, I have been busy with other things and the scooter doesn’t get much use over the summer when the caves are a better proposition for diving than Vobster. I think I might take this as an excuse to rid the scooter of the noisy drive train and go with a direct drive motor, at the moment replacement motors for the CUDA are on sale and are suitable for direct driving a scooter.
It seems recently that someone has taken over ownership of what was left of the Aquazepp brand, more information can be found in this video below: