I remember the torrid time that we had on ECMSDF during the introduction to Red Steer 2 (or it might even have been getting Red Steer 1 to work properly). Anyway, the return springs broke with monotonous regularity. We trawled the country trying to find a manufacturer who could make springs of the right quality that would last more than a few hours.
Each manufacturer would come up with the goods, we'd put them on trial installations, run the kit up and they would go for ever. Contracts were drawn up, springs manufactured and issued and - bingo - bust within very short order.
What was happening was that the manufacturers samples were effectively hand produced and of superb quality. The mass produced ones were crap.
I presume that the problem was sorted. I moved from BCDU to Aden in spring (no pun intended) 67.