British Gas service engineer

[Richard Owen]

Hello all, me again.

Here is the part in question......(kindly web-published by Colin Wilson).

It's brass, about the size of a man's thumb. The nipple at the back is important in order for service engineers to attach a rubber tube, for pressure testing I expect.

The bottom, outer thread, connects to the gas valve. The front, inner thread, connects to a pipe which goes into the boiler casing.

See how the engineer has hacksawed the first few mil off the inner thread, to try and get it to fit. That's the bit of the thread that the engineer bent.

I had a friendly, and wise, independent engineer round today. He said he would "try" and create a new part. But if anyone out there has a similar part I will gladly pay for it.

Richard Leeds

[Andrew Gabriel]

Well, here's one without the nipple:

on the left hand side, you'll see a reference to "Nipples" and "Nipples unequal", but they aren't what you think they might be, unfortunately... ;-)

There are a number of things on the following page which might be useful. There's a bare nipple 6901 which you might be able to drill and tap into an elbow, and straight brass adaptor 15204 which could possibly be coupled to an elbow with a shortening of the pipework.

[Colin Wilson]

Yup, this seems to be the key to the puzzle.

It wasn't one of those "could have happened to anyone" moments, he deliberately took a hacksaw to it.

[BigWallop]

Why cut a few millimetres off the thread? Why not pack it with fibre or neoprene washers to make it tight? Seems really silly, to me anyway, not to try and place a couple of washers in the fitting, or even sealant solution around it, then tighten it back into place. Weird engineers now'a'days.

[John]

I can envision our BG bloke gripping the elbow with a pair of water pump pliers and trying to unscrew it from the body of the gas valve thus crushing the female end then after bashing it about a bit cutting off the crushed bit. I've taken a sup[erficial look over my scrap heap but nothing there I'm afraid (although I will ask a couple of mates if they have one). IIRC the female end is a parallel thread and the pipe to the burner has an olive and a captive threaded clamping (male thread) collar so I am guessing that the remants of the female thread are now too short to engage the clamping collar. Why oh why didn't he use a small vice or even (incorrectly but less risk of damage) a pair of stilson jaws or a monkey wrench sideways accross the solid part of the body? This problem is entirely unneccessary when you think about it. :-(

[Richard Owen]

John, you're absolutely right. Alternatively the engineer could have gripped the body of the elbow rather than the crushable female thread. OR, even attaching a foot or two of spare pipe to the female thread and used that instead of clamps to create more torque and twist the elbow off the valve.

I may even have a case against BG to say that the engineer was negligent.

Richard

[loughlin]

[raden]

In message , loughlin writes