This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
This is the swivel mechanism for the high pressure air at the center of my Campbell Hausfeld automatic retracting air hose reel. That hose is crimped directly on the swivel mechanism instead of adding negligible cost with a threaded fitting.
The upshot is that the hose is not replaceable by itself if damaged. And of course parts are not readily available. Throw out the whole thing instead and buy something new. Assholes.
Cut that crimp longitudinal and peel it off with pliers. Snatch the hose off and there's a hose barb. New hose, tiny worm clamp, done.
This is a good approach to work around the shortcomings of the design, thank you!
I stand by my original assessment of the design, though. They use a threaded fitting to attach the pigtail to the reel, so this definitely feels like an active choice for planned obsolescence.
It's really more about automated assembly which ultimately is about saving labor cost. A worm clamp is impossible to automate. The crimps are more reliable and easier to automate.
Here is the manual assembly process, and per usual, disassembly is the reverse
disassembly is the reverse
More like carefully cutting through the ferrule without damaging the barb.
I wouldn’t have expected a worm clamp in here, but a standard air hose is crimped onto a threaded end (same as on the pigtail for this reel). Female threads on an angled exit from the swivel would make hose replacement easy, without adding significant labor (there are already two threaded connections on this unit).
Yesterday I just cut the hose short to get up and running again, but I’ll use your suggestion later when I get fed up with the short hose and open up the reel again. Thanks!
Throw out the whole thing instead and buy something new. Assholes.
The lesson is to never purchase that brand again for any product and to not replace it with anything that has the same planned obsolescence.
That's replaceable, you just need a crimper. Much harder will be finding the fitting to replace it. I bet they'll sell you the whole hose with a crimped fitting attached. Then you can put a normal end on the old hose and have a spare.
This is quite low on the planned obsolescence conspiracy scale.
I've fixed these with the fittings from a torch hose repair kit.
I did look a bit to see if I could find that outer part of the swivel, but I was not surprised to come up empty handed.
Of course it’s able to be repaired anyway as someone else suggested carefully cutting the crimp and reusing the barb with a hose clamp. The assholedesign is making it difficult enough that many people won’t bother. And not readily selling the replacement part made critical by unnecessary design choices, for the thing most likely to suffer accidental damage. It’s only low in the planned obsolescence conspiracy because the overall product costs less than $100 and is entirely mechanical, but that’s no excuse.
Who cares about customer satisfaction or returning customers when what the investors really care about is quarterly revenue and dividends.
Looks like a banjo fitting. You'll need to know the diameter of the center stud but several companies offer banjo adapters. A good hose shop will be able to make you a replacement hose/fix that hose relatively easy.
You got a hose guy?
I've got a pretty good hose shop in my town. I also know of one where I used to live. You could say I've got hose in different area codes.
Bro, that was amazing.
Thank you for the name of the part! Yes I might be able to find a third party fitting of the right size knowing what it’s called.
I dont think it's a banjo fitting. Fairly certain banjo fittings are not meant to move once tightened down. Another poster is right though, if you take it to a hose shop, they will probably be able to cut the old hose off and crimp a new one on. Just google "hose shop in [your town]" and there's likely to at least be one in the next town over. I live in a mid sized city and there are like 3.