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Spent a whole shift fighting a stubborn flange on a 4-inch steam line
The gasket surface had some pitting I couldn't see until we got the old one off, and aligning the new bolts with the warped metal was a nightmare. What should have been a two-hour swap on a Tuesday in Gary turned into an eight-hour ordeal with three of us on it. What's your go-to trick for seating a flange on a pitted surface without a full re-machining job?
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the_claire1d ago
I used to swear by just cranking down the bolts. Then a guy at the Hammond plant showed me a thin layer of high-temp RTV on the gasket. It fills those tiny pits and buys you time.
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wood.eric1d ago
Thought that was just a hack until I tried it on an old manifold. Now I keep a tube in the toolbox.
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