Home Made "O" Rings?

Most car/auto/engineering supplies shops have DIY "O" ring kits.These are made from round rubber and joined using cyno adhesive.Search the web for DIY "O" ring kits. Regards

Thanks for the lead. The vulcanizing O-ring kits are in the $1000 range. Might work but not economical for one repair. The crazy glue method would likely fail due to the water/chlorine environment. I'll search some more.

I'm not sure what this looks like. What part has broke, and how often does it rotate.

greg

Would a silicone sealant from a tube do the job?

Go here and type o-ring in the search.

Get very accurate on the cross section diameter and measure the inside and outside of the o-ring. If it is broken you may need to measure the length and do some geometry math to determine the diameter. If all else fails call a local bearing/mechanical supply house they can get rings custom made. You will have to decide if the price of a custom o-ring is better than replacing the filter. Good luck.

Thank you all for the suggestions. [Mcmaster-Carr is great!]. The valve rotates only when backwshing - so a few times each month. But still, not static. In speaking with RocketSeal, it appears a custom "vulcanized" gasket would cost several hundreds of $$ just for the jig. [The radial sections between the inner and outer O-ring complicates this fabrication.] I could make a wooden mold with a router but I doubt I could pour a durable gasket. Since rotation is minimal, before I give up, I may try to fabricate a gasket of appropriate thickness. Again, I appreciate your ideas!

For some industries, there is available gasket rubber. You can cut out your own gaskets. Check this out at any of the major hardware centres. Actually, any type of medium soft rubber sheet will work. You just have to find a way to accurately cut your own gasket from it.

Many of the automobile centres who service the older cars will carry gasket rubber sheeting. When I was working in engine rebuilding, I used to use to make my own gaskets at times. I would doubt they spend a thousand bucks to make a gasket. If so, the client would blow his gasket!

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JANA _____

My swimming pool sand filter is 30 years old. Parts no longer available. The valve has begun to leak from a "spider" gasket - basically an 8 inch "O" ring and a "1 inch "O" ring connected by 3 radials [which separate rinse/filter/backwash chambers]. The gasket must allow the valve body to rotate to the three positions so I doubt anything as simple as silicone caulk would work. No comparable part available AFAIK. Replacing the sand filter would not only be pricey, but labor intensive. Does any one have experience making [or piecing together] such a gasket? Or a link that might help? Thanks for any wisdom.

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Then you could use the tool a second time. That would make it only

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

RS Components in UK do an O ring kit to make up your own O rings - this has worked well for me in the past. Cyano-acrylate gluing of the butyl-nitrate rubber hasn't failed on any I've made up (so far - in some cases over 10 years).

I'm sure that equivalent kits are available elsewhere.

Dave

Also for O rings,

Small Parts Inc.

MSC

I would also lube the rings with silicon grease, stopcock grease, and or, high vacuum grease.

greg

Check with heavy equipment repair places. (Bull dozer, front end loaders, etc.) They carry a wide variety of O-rings. If they have one with the right diameter, but too big you can cut out some of the rubber and glue the ends together.

The problem is, even if you patch something together the rest of the valve and the filter tank are still 30 years old. Ripe for Murphy rearing his ugly head and causing a crack in the obsolete valve a month down the road. I'd reconsider replacing the whole thing and buying a spare set of gaskets for it.

I see a lot of 6 radial spider gaskets for current filters and wonder if they're close enough to modify. . Steve Noll | The Glass Block Pond |

Gee, Smitty, if you can glue the ends of the gasket material together o make an "O" ring, you can also glue the radials in place. At least, I would do it for something of mine that I needed really bad. The seals were bad on the whole house water filter when I moved into this house, but the plastic threads on the cartridge housing were so badly worn that the entire system was scrapped. It wasn't worth rebuilding a 20 year old system that used VERY hard to find filter cartridges when you knew that the hairline cracks in the clear molded plastic cartridge cover would spread into full blown cracks and leak some day soon. I could have even made a new cover out of some clear 4" plastic pipe I had on hand, but why piece together a piece of worn out junk?

John,

I'd exhaust all of your other options first. Then, if I struck out, I'd try molding my own part:

a) I'd get a piece of hardwood...something with a nice tight grain.

b) I'd take a router, and route the pattern I wanted into the wood. This is the mold.

c) I'd oil the wood...mineral oil, maybe? This should act as a mold release.

d) I'd get a cartridge of silicone RTV, put it in my caulking gun, and lay down a nice heavy bead in the mold.

In your case, you might consider using one of the automotive RTVs...black or red types...those are used in more chemically hostile environments so they may have stabilizing compounds that might work to your benefit in the chlorine-rich environment of the pool pump.

You can get RTV rubber in sheets, IIRC. Another possibility would be to lay out a pattern on the sheet, and then carefully cut it out with scissors and/or a sharp knife.

I don't know if any of this would work, but hey...It might be worth trying.

Pete

John Keiser wrote: