New waterway gaskets for Thorn M?

[tarquinlinbin]

A friend has a Thorn M boiler,unfortunately he cant find a data plate on it so hes not sure of the size/GC number. He lives about 150 miles away from me. Apparently one of the mudhole gaskets has started to leak so hes drained it and taken the plate off the waterway but he obviously cant source any new gaskets due to the age of the boiler. When i used to mend boilers i either got the proper gaskets or cut some out of gasket material which i seem to remember was some kind of rubberised sheet material. A boiler change isnt really an option due to expense and its a simple fix anyway. The boiler is CF.

I wonder if anyone knows a source of this material? My firned lives up in Cumbria near Whitehaven

ta

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[Dave]

I used to have one of those boilers and you can still get the rubber gaskets, but they are way above the price that they should be.

Get your friend to find a source of fairly high temp rubber, of about 6 mm thick and tell him to cut one/two (ours always wanted two) out from the old, usually crispy one (when you remove the plate that retains the seals, there are two of them and they usually deteriorate at the same rate).

To remove the panel that has the seals, you also have to remove the gas control valve, the flame sensor and the boiler burner with it. Get a small brush and remove any crud from the burner. On re-lighting the boiler, there will be some yellow flaming, but it should stop within a few minutes. If not, remove the burner and blow it out ad try again. I never had to that :-)

I would also be tempted to use something like copper slip on the threads of the studs when building the boiler back up. Reason being, they can corrode with the weepage of water. Others may come up with another alternative that may be better. This is just my experience from having to drill another hole to clamp the cover to the boiler. In the end, I drilled the old stud out and re-tapped the cast iron boiler for the next sized thread.

On second thoughts, the temp that the rubber has to undertake, 6 mm ordinary rubber should do the trick. There is no way that temps above the boiler water will be experienced. It is far from the burner and is cooled by the water.

[Sponix]

A decent car accessory shop should be able to provide gasket material that'll do the job.

sponix

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - my Potterton uses O rings between the heat exchanger sections and they appear to be bog standard neoprene.

A decent motor factor should have similar material in sheet form.