King keg woes

[porter]

I see from this forum i am not the only one to suffer from King keg problems.
My first brew is ready to keg.I ended up buying a King keg despite hearing of problems some users had.
I decided to give it a clean and filled it with water and gave it a couple of squirts of gas to pressurise it,then leave it overnight to check it had held pressure....no such luck.
Everything looked fine,vaseline applied,all rubbers look perfect.
I'm quite a big lad at 6'4" and tried tightening the cap to stem the air leak so i don't believe that tightness was an issue.
Placed a square of glass over the top to check for square/true,looked more or less perfect.I gave it a slight rub with wet&dry and re-checked.Re-gassed and still no joy.
I can only assume the quality control doesn't exist where they make these things.It makes me wonder how many beginners have racked their brew only to try it weeks later and find it flat/off?
So now i'm gonna go to my lhbs and get the nice people who run it to swap it for the normal-bottom tap pressure barrel.I had two of these years ago without any trouble at all.

 

[pittsy]

yes funny 1 that , they either work fine or full of problems . Do you know it's not the tap area leaking and not the top ?

 

[porter]

The tap seems fine.I sprayed on some anti-bac liquid on the tap and the top to check for bubbles.The tap seems fine.The s30 valve seems fine,it appears to be the seal in the cap and the top of the keg.I even over-gassed it to make the pressure release work so i could rule out the air escaping from it.
I'm at the end of my tether with the king keg.
I saw it in the shop and instantly fell in love,we're getting a divorce tomorrow!

 

[LeithR]

Hi there, You say you are a big lad, indicating that you tightened the cap as tight as you could? This is not a good idea on KK's the cap needs to be tight but not overly so or you will distort the washer inside the cap thus allowing it to leak. Use lashings of vasiline and all should be good. I've got 3 on the go and all work well, I have the occasional problem but generally they work well. The major down side of any of the PB's is that they do not hold good high pressure so you can't expect to the same conditioning you can expect from a bottle.

 

[porter]

Hi there, You say you are a big lad, indicating that you tightened the cap as tight as you could? This is not a good idea on KK's the cap needs to be tight but not overly so or you will distort the washer inside the cap thus allowing it to leak. Use lashings of vasiline and all should be good. I've got 3 on the go and all work well, I have the occasional problem but generally they work well. The major down side of any of the PB's is that they do not hold good high pressure so you can't expect to the same conditioning you can expect from a bottle.

I see what you mean but i initially tightened the cap like you would when changing the oil filter on a car (if that makes sense)
when i gassed it ,it began to leak so after several times on and off i progressively tightened it a bit more at a time to no avail.I see on the web you can buy a type of wrench for these so not sure if that would get it any tighter to be honest.
I re-lubed with vaseline and double checked the rubber o-ring but still no joy.
I'm just glad i've had the problem now and not once my beer is in it!

 

[porter]

Quick update;
Took kk back to lhbs and to be honest the family run unit couldn't have been more helpful.Whatever i wanted they were gunna do ,swap for another kk,refund,go to a standard pb.
The guys gave the kk a good once over and changed the o-ring ,tightened with a wrench then pressurised to max pressure and it seemed fine so i left with a bit more confidence.
I still think the cap needs to be more tight than the average person could manage without a wrench.
I've seen on youtube several cures for the leaky kk including,ptfe tape on the barrel threads,a pressure guage to monitor the pressure,and a kind of heavy duty o-ring.
Now i've got the beer in it and reflected i'm pretty pi$$ed off that a barrel costing £50 should need ptfe tape,sandpapering,new seals and a guage.
I think something is seriously wrong with kk judging by the amount of vids,complaints etc.
Quality control...don't make me laugh :nono: