Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hormesis wrote:Wash is down-we're gettin' close..........

I found these 2" crimp on 90° elbows at the recycle place and customized one for my blockhead outlet / PC inlet. I cut off the ends with the o-rings and formed the flanges with my flange forming jig. As you can see, I put rings on for flanges but the material is so thick I don't think I'll need the rings so I flattened only one of them for now. I had to use a hand file to relieve the area just below the flanges to allow the clamp to get the proper fit. (see arrows)

Looks great so far. Just a quick note though, those aren't crimp on connectors. They are a soft solder joint elbow. If you look inside the opening at the raised ridge you will see it is filled with soft solder. The idea is you clean the end of the pipe, slip the elbow on and heat the ridge evenly with an LPG torch until you see the solder creep out the edge of the joint.
No idea what mix the solder would be, but these fittings were common and looked down on by my plumbing teacher 30 years ago. He believed if you couldn't silver solder a join in a wall cavity using oxy without burning the house down, you shouldn't call yourself a plumber. :)
Greg.

Nope Ravvin, here in the US (with this exact model anyway) it's a rubberish o-ring of some flavor. I took it out and it's a lubed o-ring. The same thing was used on some new construction at the place I work. I'll go take a photograph and get some details if you're interested.

OK guys, I've had some work/life challenges (too much overtime and broken phone among others) but it's DONE! I'll show ya what pix I was able to salvage.
.....and OH, did I mention I've run it too?!

Here she is on my spare keg.

Here she is in my garage with heat applied.
Remember that honey hole I showed you?.....check out the flow meters......0.0 lpm to 0.5 lpm range with bypass.
Zero parts fabbed by me......just dig deep enough in the honey hole.....it was like putting together Leggos

Now for the maiden voyage............
For the module assembly gaskets I used silicone tri clamp gaskets bought off of fleabay. I ordered from two vendors so the gaskets were slightly different. Same OD but different ID and different thickness. I shaved off the ridge on each side of the each gasket and made a bubble plate sandwhich. IE: module flange then gasket then bubble plate then gasket then next module flange. The thickness of all of these layers barely fit the tri clamp but all of the tri clamps closed, just finger tight.

For the RC joints, I left the ridges on the gaskets for a little extra thickness and got a good seal there too.

Pretty straight forward for the pc and outlet extension tube assembly.

OK lets water it up. Looks pretty sweet on the boiler. Filled all of the modules and found several small leaks between modules -- finger tightened to stop leaks on all except one, I had to use a screwdriver in the nut to get it tight enough. PC had slight leak on inlet, had to use lever to get this one tight enough too.

OK, let's drain out all but 2 gallons of water and put in 2 gallons of vinegar. Connect plumbing and que up Jim Morrison......plug in my 1300 watts and make things happen! With 60,000 btu LP and 1300 watts we heated 4 gallons pretty quickly. She looked like ole UP 8444.
Ran for an hour or so with various combinations of cooling but mostly no cooling at all.....no dramas.
Drained out the vinegar solution (saved it for next build or mod) and put in about 5 gallons water. Same run scheme......run hard with various combinations of cooling but mostly no cooling at all.

We're gettin to the good part now but I 'gotta go to work and presently have no mobile to continue.....

Well done mate :handgestures-thumbupleft: great photos too, looking forward to hearing how your first proper run goes.