• If You Are Having Trouble Logging In with Your Old Username and Password, Please use this Forgot Your Password link to get re-established.
  • Hey! Be sure to login or register!

Stuck Edo compartment covers

P B Blaster, then wait for ten minutes or so. that stuff can almost seep through glass just be patient and tighten loosen a little at a time then never seize when you get them off. Are the floats on John?
 
Once you get them loose, John, try to remove them and lube each fall or spring. I know you are very busy, but that is a very corrosive environment, and it will save you a lot of grief. Hope you are doing will, Reid
 
Had same problem on one of mine. PB blaster and patience, took about 1/2 hour to get it out. I Had to put vice grip on big screwdriver and run screw in and out of the nut, I could only gain about 1/2-1/4 turn each go around. Soak it a few times and lit it sit overnight might help.
DENNY
 
Screenshot_20170717-130242.png

Once free this works the best at keeping things free. You can thin it with turpitine or heat. Aerodrome used this on the hundreds of turnbuckles they have.

Glenn
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20170717-130242.png
    Screenshot_20170717-130242.png
    135.6 KB · Views: 161
ACF-50 is also a good/great penetrant and will stop the corrosion for awhile. I've become a frequent user of the stuff on firearms; especially those are exposed to the weather. No rust in the mechanism and hidden areas that can't easily be cleaned.
 
Once you get them loose, John, try to remove them and lube each fall or spring. I know you are very busy, but that is a very corrosive environment, and it will save you a lot of grief. Hope you are doing will, Reid
Yes should have done this before. I have a few that will not move from closed tight. Used some Boeing-Lube but no go. I will get some PB blaster and give it a go. I need to get one of the long Zeus screwdrivers with a broad blade to help I think.
Thanks
John
 
John if you have the old style hand impact tool there should be some bigger blades in your kit. I changed the ones on my old 1400 ( same style cover ) to SS Phillips.

Glenn
 
Wish it was this simple on older style PKs , had to do a set a few years back that some moron
had attacked the Phillips heads with a bit that was too small and totally distroyed the heads so that we had to use the removal bits Steve posted,where you drill it out to a tapered
cone and then remove with the special tip that fits it with same taper. However the threads were so
bad that when you hit them it would either cut the head right off the shafts, or tear the nutplates off or
twist them all up! Ended up actually replacing 82 of the nutplates, so turned into a pretty big job to
straighten them out compared to Edo's. Those covers had not been off for dozens of years. Of course
inside we found hoses that had come loose from the retaining brackets and then curled up on the ends
so that when you pumped the compartment, and you heard it pumped dry, you assumed it was. Of course
it was leaving 3/5" of water in the bottom of that compartment. Even in a small set of floats like 1800's.
A little math showed that you could easily have 50lbs of water in a bigger compartment when those hoses are not right down
hard into the bottoms, where they are soposed to be. We replaced all the screws with new SS ones , and silver never-seize, any nutplates that were not replaced we ran a tap thru so there was no galling on the threads of the new screws. Anyway; the whole mess was a couple of days work that could have easily all been avoided
if the screws ,had simply been at least ALL pulled once a year, and a few drops of oil put on the threads and reinserted,compared to letting them set for years in that highly corrosive environment ,and then trying to take them out with a drill,with the wrong bit in it! Of course now you can pull a cover in 30 secs, to see what's going on in there. However
it turns out to get there was quite an envolved project that no one wanted to take on. Pita project.

The brace and bit is of course how most high quality guns are assembled so that when you try to disassemble them with a hand screw driver you will usually not be able to turn the screw and end up tearing the heads up trying! When we make new breach pins we always time them to come out at 11 o' clock then " stretch em" in to 12 o' clock, with a brace and bit, that you hollow grind the bit to fit exactly the slot in the head of the screws. There is plenty of torque there!


On breaking threads free that are corroded, there is a product from Chemsearch
called "Yield" that is about the best I have ever used. However it is hard to find and
pricey! We use it on gun barrel threads, that have been on for a hundred years (old Winchester n Marlins)and it will show up 10/12 threads later,inside the frame 10x faster than Kroil or PB........

CRC "Freeze-Off Super Penetrant" is another good bet.
 
Last edited:
Since we never heard from John I have to wonder if he resorted to the cutting torch. ;)
You are close. I treated the screws as best as possible and got one hatch to give way. 3-4 others I used the impact screwdriver on and it now spins freely......freely being the key word. It is time to cut the screw heads off as I suspect a rivnut no longer in place. For the sake of the floats it was a walk away and come back another day.
 
Drill the heads off and remove the cover. The rest is easy. Probably woulda been easier when the heads were seized.
 
Drill the heads off and remove the cover. The rest is easy. Probably woulda been easier when the heads were seized.

Washer under the head so I should be able to trap it and drill. Worse comes to worse i can split the screw head.
 
My dad makes a solution called weasel piss, 3 parts tranny fluid and 1 part acetone, it's an old farmer trick, use it like WD or PB.

We removed hundreds of stuck screws on USN aircraft using a "cheater bar" special tool. It was just a bar made of two rails and handle with a flat L at the non-handle end. The L had a hole in it for attaching to a neighboring screw hole. The rails had a block that slide with a 3/8" ratchet adapter. The cheater bar was attached to a neighbor hole and the slider was lined up on the stuck screw. When pressure was applied at the handle the screw driver tip would never slip off the screw and the screw would come about 9/10 times. If that failed we drilled it out often replacing the anchor nut also.
 
Back
Top