I have had my Excal 1000 for ten years or so and only had to have coil replaced because plastic on edge of coil was thin and sprung a leak. That was about 8 years ago. I've dove with it to 140 foot with no trouble. Worst thing you can do is leave it in a car trunk! On a whim I bought an Excal II and think the older one is deeper.
What I find significant, is that the failure in your search oil was at the edge of the coil where it is thin and most likely brittle having been used for ten years. If you carefully inspect the bottom of the search coil it is noticeably thicker and softer, which is not surprising as I have yet to see a coil failure at/near the middle of the search coil.
If my observation is true for most reported failures, this is important as a more protective bumper and thin skid could be used which trap far less sand and still would provide adequate protection of the search coil. This more open protective cover would significantly increase performance as there would be less noise from sand even if it built up as the belly of the coil is open. Since it does not require as much protection.
Further, it would increase reliability, if what I observed is true in that many of the cable failures are induced when the cable is inadvertantly pushed against the sand while trying to remove the trapped sand, especially when using a long straight shaft such as the Anderson Tall Man.
When the control pod is mounted on an extended shaft the normal way with the headphone cable up, you can expect numerous failures with headphones.
When the control pod is mounted on an extended shaft with the head phone wires pointed down, so the head phones would not be jerked off your head when drop kneeing to scoop up a target, you can expected increased failure rates in the battery cable and the search coil cable as they will be pushed into the ground while cleaning the protective cover.
That is unless you are extremely careful or use a stand, to prevent the cables from being pushed against the ground when cleaning the coil cover.
