Unpin Stout tap handle adapter

I recently started pouring Guinness at my home bar. I bought the kit and faucet to be able to pour a stout. The faucet however came with an adapter pinned on to it so I could screw on a standard American tap handle. I have a European style Guinness tap that doesn't use the threaded rod like American handles. I was wondering if anyone has popped the pin out of the stout faucet to remove the threaded adapter and put a standard European tap handle. If so, is this something I can do while the faucet is pressurized? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I think for ease of replacing, you would want to have the faucet off the shank and into your hands…

If you have beer in the line and it’s pressurized then I’d suggest not as my stout handle very easily dispenses (assuming your under a 30+psi load as I am). But, I love a challenge and, even more, reading about curiosities acted out… maybe have a drip pan underneath? I mean, it’s not going to continue spewing brew all over as the handle initiates the action, it’s not part of the actual action. Worst case just read my first sentence.

Thanks for the advice. I have a built in drip tray so I think I'll accept the challenge and try to do it while it's still attached. My pressure is right at 30psi but as long as the handle isn't holding in any pressurized pieces I think I should be fine. I'll let you know how it goes once it's done.

Thanks again,

So I gave it a shot this weekend and it was a successful failure. Taking the handle and adapter off was easy. It only took about 30 seconds. After the adapter was off I was faced with a new problem that I'm not sure how to handle. The slot in the bottom of my Guinness tap handle is about 3/16 of an inch. When I removed the handle adapter from my faucet I found that the spindle is made for a 3/8 inch slot. So now I either need to buy an adapter that I found online but that will add height to my handle that I don't want, or try and grind down my spindle to accommodate the 3/16 slot on my tap handle. Unless anyone else has any other suggestions. I was trying to find a place where I could buy a new spindle with the correct size, but I can't seem to find any. Any ideas???

This was a little more complicated than I would have thought but it all worked out in the end. Here's what I had to do. I bought a spare spindle from micromatic:
http://www.micromatic.com/part-pid-100-248.html

Here's what I'm working with:



So I took my spare spindle to a grinding wheel and came out with this:



I then removed the gas from my Guinness keg and disassembled my stout faucet, removed the old spindle and inserted the new one. I used a dial caliper to check the height of the pin hole on my spindle a new I would be slightly off so I reassembled my faucet and before I put the bonnet on I added an extremely think metal washer to take out the play in my new handle. Here's the result. An American faucet with a European authentic Guinness handle:



I now get a great pour and a great looking faucet/handle combo.

Thanks for posting this. I'm look at that same stout faucet and was wondering about using standard threaded tap handles with it.

Does anyone know how the short stout faucets differ from the longer ones?