Help! Picnic tap leaks!

After a few posts about loosing almost if not all full kegs here and on another forum I decided to check my tap after I just kegged my ipa. Well the sob leaks like a mother. I tore it apart the last time I kicked a keg to clean it so I'm guessing I messed something up. I didn't go so far as to talk the rubber piece off the spring but when I tired it its like I'm putting my thumb over a garden hose. How do I fix this?

If you're losing full kegs of beer maybe you should spend the $3.50 and get a new picnic faucet.

Where is the leak coming from? If it is from the nozzle of the tap itself than get a new tap. Cut the serving tube just behind the old tap, heat the new end of the serving line with some steam and put the new tap on.

Another idea if you are losing that much beer is that your serving line might not be the right size for the picnic tap, although this seems pretty unlikely since then it wouldn't be the right size for the adapter on the keg post either. Does the tube fit very snugly around the picnic tap, to the point where it bulges the tube a bit and you can't pull the picnic tap off?

I didn't lose any beer thank god! It just didn't shut off all the way and was spraying out of the of normal end.

Are they not mean to be taken apart and cleaned?

Figured it out I think. The spring under the rubber boot was a little bound up. I remove the spring and put it back with out letting the spring twist when I reassembled the tap.

I had a similar experience once when I keg hopped with leaf hops. Be sure to clean and sanitize the faucet because the gunk clogging the spring may have also been incubating bacteria.

Flatspin said:

I had a similar experience once when I keg hopped with leaf hops. Be sure to clean and sanitize the faucet because the gunk clogging the spring may have also been incubating bacteria.

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Ya the reason it messed up in the first place was I was trying to clean it.