Rusty Posts

[Henno]

Hey guys,

Just a quick question before I duck off to work. Or two.

I recently bought 5 second hand 23L schweppes kegs and they all leak. I have bought a couple of washers and grommets individually to try and rebuild the posts. So far so good easy to get apart but a bitch to get back together.

The yellow washers that are at the seat that they screw down into are all reduced to a mash that falls apart so that gunk is everywhere and the other thing I noted was that where the pick up pipe goes down there is a big black rubber washer/spacer the pick up sits in that is all distorted and squished up. Then the yellow washer sits on top of this. Can I just jam these back in and hope for the best, coz I can't seem to find new ones of these anywhere?

Also what is a good solution to soak the posts in to remove rust and gunk etc? I was thinking something like that CLR stuff I see advertised on telly or even a kind of acid. The poppets inside some of the posts are brown with smelly corrosion type stuff and I would like to soak it off instead of getting out the sand paper or steel wool and possibly scratching them up.

I can post some picks of the disaster area tonight if that helps.

Cheers for any help as always
Henno

 

[Wortgames]

Henno, those Schweppes kegs are pretty easy to find parts for.

The yellow washers and the black ones the diptubes go in aren't hard to find - most decent homebrew shops will have them, or I'm sure Ross (at Craftbrewer) can help you out.

The poppets are probably the standard Cornelius type that I've called 4B (check out this thread) and again, Ross or your local HBS should be able to help. Don't bother trying to clean the old ones.

The posts themselves can be cleaned up by soaking in hot napisan solution for an hour or two to get rid of any organic gunk, then CLR should get rid of any remaining rust spots. If the rust stains are bad and CLR isn't doing the trick then pop in to any stainless steel fabrication place and ask if they can pickle them for you. They have a special acid from hell that takes stainless back to bare metal.

One final tip - if the kegs aren't all identical then try not to mix the parts up.

 

[Lactobacillus]

As for cleaning the gunk, I would suggest either PSR or "Bottle & Glass CLeaner". I have used it extensively on kegs to get rid of old, hardened syrup etc and it seems to work fine. Now as for the o'rings, I know for a fact that they sell them at the Country Brewer stores. The yellow ones are necessary, but the smaller dip-tube o-rings are not as essential, except for the piece-of-mind factor.

 

[paul]

To clean rust off the posts just use a scourer