cooler mash tun help sealing it up?

[haeffnkr]

Hello,
I ordered the flat gasket from bargainfittings out of this kit -

http://www.bargainfittings.com/index.phroute=product/product&product_id=167

to help seal up the standard drain hole in my coleman extreme cooler ... the standard oring gasket is to small from the standard cooler/weldless kit.

Will this gasket get it sealed up? or is there another trick to getting the cooler water tight?

thanks Kevin

 

[Golddiggie]

Had pretty much the same issue with my cooler... Ended up using thicker O-Ring's instead of the ones that came with the ball valve... Did you place the washer on the outside of the cooler, with the other O-Ring between the washer and cooler wall? Basically, you want the O-Rings to seal the hole up...

I'll take a picture of how mine is setup now, tomorrow, and post it...

 

[haeffnkr]

I just tried one oring on the inside....I read...and it seems to make sense to me...to only seal the inside up water tight...if it leaks you want to see it coming out and not have you beer swimming around the inside walls/insulation of the cooler.

thanks Kevin

 

[Golddiggie]

The inner wall of my cooler is pretty solid, I believe... If it was hollow, then yeah, I'd go that route too. Or if it was filled with porous materials.

Either way, I'm confident that the way my cooler is set up will be water tight, on both sides, so I won't need to worry about it..

I don't know why they include those thin O-Rings with the ball valves. If you make the hole the size they say to, for a pot, the O-Rings are just as useless. They need to start packaging them up with the thicker O-Rings so that they seal properly.

What are you using on the inside of the ball valve setup?? Just curious, I'll show what I went with in the picture tomorrow.

 

[haeffnkr]

What are you using on the inside of the ball valve setup?? Just curious, I'll show what I went with in the picture tomorrow.

I have a jam nut, like the one in the pic, run up as far as I can on the outside threads of the nipple. There is plenty of room left on the threads so the ball valve does not run up against it.

So when I get the big silicon sealing washer I will put it on the inside and run the other jam nut down the nipple from the inside, again enough threads to put on the coupler then my barbed fitting for the stainless braid

thanks Kevin

 

[Golddiggie]

This is a not so good shot of my MLT/converted cooler...

I'll take a better picture tomorrow. At least you can see some of what I'm talking about... I'll also try to get a decent shot of the outside of the cooler, at the valve...

 

[Golddiggie]

Slightly better pictures of the ball valve setup on my MLT...

Shot of the outside... There is a washer on the outside, with an O-Ring between it and the cooler side.

Closeup of the inside where the assembly comes through... Note the second washer. Those are there to help compress the O-Rings to ensure they seal up properly.

 

[Bobby_M]

The problem (or potential problem) with that last picture is that liquid is prone to go between the coupling and washer, then it finds threads that spiral underneath the oring.

Just make sure you put a ton of teflon tape on before you put the nut back on.

 

[Golddiggie]

There's plenty of teflon tape on the threads that go between the inside and outside of the cooler.

I'll be testing it with plain water before we use it as a mash tun, just to make sure it's 100% leak free...

 

[snail]

From the looks of that channel to the hole, it looks like your using a Coleman Extreme cooler. I have the same one and always had problems sealing it using the oring. It seemed the diameter of the oring wasn't big enough and would sink into the hole, just what yours looks like.
I followed how this guy sealed his coolor in this thread. It works great! No more leaks and it's more solid than it's ever been!

 

[Golddiggie]

The O-Rings that came with the ball valve didn't work right. Hence why I went to the thicker ones (about twice the thickness of the included ones)... Same ones I got to work perfectly on my kettles... On the kettles, even though I drilled the correct size hole, the pots wouldn't seal. Using the thicker O-Rings and I got a real nice seal... Zero leaks, even during a boil test... Left full volume of water in the pots for well over an hour, and sprayed water all around the inside of the valves while filling the pots/kettles...

Still, I plan on testing it out come tomorrow to make sure... Worst case, I'll have the guy at the LHBS fix it (he assembled it while I was there) since I'll be there on Saturday anyway...

 

[hamiltont]

Guys, I hate to rain on your parade but this is a lot simpler, and you can take it apart in seconds & have your cooler back. Cheers!!!

 

[Golddiggie]

Didn't want to go ghetto...