Gas distributor manifold leaks

[DVCNick]

I've always suspected I had a slow leak in my three way distributor, and am between brews right now, so figured now would be a good time to take it apart.
I just replaced all the teflon tape on all 5 connections, pressurized it to 15 psi, submerged in a big bowl of water, and three out of the five connections are bubbling. If anything it is probably losing pressure considerably faster than before. Everything is on the upper end of "hand tight".

Is there something I'm doing wrong here?
I see that the threading in the block itself is pretty rough and might be the issue.
Is there a brand of distributor blocks out there that is really good?
Anything else I should try first?
Thanks

 

[DVCNick]

What I've done now is take it back apart and put a healthy helping of keg lube on all the female threading in addition to teflon tape on the male threading, and that seems to have resulted in a massive improvement so far... will keep an eye on it.

 

[ZuzBrews]

If you're still have a problem with leaks, you might want to try this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/1-2-in-...-Sealing-PTFE-Plumber-s-Tape-31403D/202078116
I've used it on my manifolds and haven't had any leaks.

 

[DVCNick]

Thanks... yeah I just learned there are different types of the tape when I was looking earlier.

Right now I have the distributor and just a small bit of supply hose behind it pressurized, so not much gas volume overall. Set it to 15 psi and shut off the supply by turning the regulator all the way down, so no new supply is coming in from the residual in the high pressure side. So far it has lost about 1 PSI/hour from that small volume. I think that is pretty minimal. I left it submerged in the same state for a while and never saw a single bubble.

 

[day_trippr]

I recommend dunk-testing any section of a gas system possible during the build to avoid potential multi-point leaks that can drive one batpoopy to track down.
This was a manifold and drops for one of my three brewery fridges (all three have the same setup for flexibility). There were four different leaks, two at the manifold, one at a QD missing its cap gasket, and the last was a swivel flare with a dinged nylon flare washer.

If this had gone straight into the fridge I'd likely still be trying to figure out all that was wrong...

As for screwing things into aluminum beams, rather than tape that can easily get torn up by the beam threading, this blue goo works much better...

Cheers!

 

[DVCNick]

Thanks! will definitely keep that in mind.
Yep my assembly looks just like that except with three drops instead of four. I leave the valves off as well for any QD that is not in active use.

I'm honestly not even sure how they made this block, I guess it likely has to be a machined forging, but it is some of the worst machining I have ever seen. I guess doing it better would cost a lot more if you go by somewhat similar products from other industries.