When I drilled the 5/8" holes to lock the leg pipes together, after I inserted the 5/8" bolts through the holes there was enough wiggle in the legs that I thought there was no way that locking everything down tight with washers and nuts would sufficiently reduce the wiggle between the leg pipes. Fortunately, I was wrong.
I needed to pick up washers at Home Depot, so couldn't test this until tonight. I cranked down on the nuts with a wrench.
After tightening all five sets of bolts, washers and nuts, the legs their pipes are indeed locked together. As far as I can tell, this will work. Yea!
5 comments:
Victor, How much did you tighten the bolts? Enough to compress the outer pipe to tighten the inner pipe? I have the same wiggle (inner pipe-leg) and I need a quick solution before the wiggle causes the holes to open up more! I'm afraid to tighten it too much or else the gas pipes will dent and will not be able to pull apart later on. The flange to to leg and the flange to pipe are pretty good and tight.
Thanks
Mike A.
Hi Mike,
I tightened them pretty tight, but not enough to strip the bolts or nuts. I'm not sure if the outer pipe might have slightly compressed against the inner pipe (I tend not to think so), but I don't have a concern that the pipes won't come apart even if some compression did occur. The points of compression would be a relatively small portion of the overall surface area.
Bottom line: I recommend that you try tightening the nuts down a bit more first. Washers underneath the nuts do help in this case as well. I'm using flat washers, as opposed to the cut lock washers.
Let me know how it goes,
Victor
I tightened both bolts, each with a washer on both side of the pipe. I still get 2-3 degrees of wiggle on the leg with the inner pipe.
Maybe a metric bolt may fit more snug? hmmmmm.
I will add two more bolts to the pipe using a smaller diameter. That way, in the future, if the holes enlarge, I can always up the bolt size.
Mike A.
Mike,
Sorry to hear that tightening everything down with washers didn't do the trick. At this point I'd also probably try a slightly larger bolt. Hopefully that will help.
Best of luck,
Victor
Post a Comment