Anaerobic Gasket Dressing: A Heads Up

Hopefully this will prevent others from having the distress which I recently endured.

I applied Permatex Anaerobic Gasket Dressing to the gasket on my Monobloc float cover. There was a persistent drip which tightening the three screws could not stop, despite a new Amal cover gasket. I decided to apply anaerobic gasket dressing to the cover side of the gasket, leaving the body side dry. I tightened the three screws, more than snug, but not overly tight, waited overnight for the gasket dressing to cure. The drip stopped, but after I cranked up the Atlas, I found I needed to adjust the float level, and when I tried to remove the three cover screws, I found the screws to be "LocTited". Apparently, anaerobic material got squeezed into the threaded holes and locked the screws. Two screws came out with only minor "boogering" of the heads, but the third required me to drill out the head. I was able to pry off the cover, and get pliers on the stub of the screw remaining. That screw required a lot of torque to remove it, as if it had been set with red LocTite. I feared it might twist off before breaking loose.

If I ever use anaerobic gasket dressing again, I will take great care to ensure the material does not get squeezed into any screw holes. I do not think I applied too much dressing, as I only applied a smear, with no surplus. Sometimes, the old fashioned stand-bys like Form-A-Gasket or Indian Head sealer are superior to the modern Hi-Tech stuff!

I hope this helps.

Slick

A certain radar company employed Loctite Gasket Eliminator on a certain radar system to seal joints. It came in big tubes and looked like pink sperm when applied. If you want a sealant that you can drill and tap once it has gone off but which is of no use sealing joints subjected to vibration and sea water it is perfect. As I remember it the mechanical fitters tasked with sealing the system unergoing vibration and water spray testing said something like 'sod using this cdrap' qas they scraped /filed it off the joint faces and dug out tabes of good old reliable Blue Hylomor which did the trick. I did hear the erection shop instantly adopted the use of Hylomar on all the other production systems but as to whether the drawings were ever changed to call up its use.........my money is on them not being changed.........
Personally I prefered using good old World War One Wellseal to which I was introduced by an ex AMC race mechanic many decades ago.
I noticed on the web a lot of discussion on the subject of Wellseal versis Hylomar ......
Just a tought but I often found alloy float bowels on concentrics to distort over time and always checked them on a surface plate first, correcting them if required. I always felt the flange should of been a lot thicker to reduce the distrortion. Wonder if the gaskets available these days are as good as in my younger days??