Vent: Took me 6 hours to fix a tube leak that should have been 30 minutes

I was doing a tube replacement on a heat exchanger last week and hit a real snag. The old tube rolled over on me during the pull. Ended up having to cut it out in pieces with a die grinder. What I thought was a simple swap turned into a 6 hour mess. Has anyone else had a tube fight back like that? How do you avoid the rollover?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_hayden14d ago

Man, that's brutal. I feel your pain. Same thing happened to me on a boiler tube pull a few years back, I was cussing up a storm. I tried everything, wedges, heat, but that tube just rolled into a pretzel. Ended up like you, grinding it out in chunks. @the_brooke is right about the penetrating oil and the slow pull, but I also swear by using a tube expander to loosen it up a bit before I even try to yank it. That one trick has saved me from a few 6 hour nightmares since. You just gotta respect that metal sometimes.

the_brooke14d ago

I used to think pulling tubes was pretty straightforward, you just yank them out and you're done. But last month I had a similar situation on a condenser and it totally changed how I look at it. The tube got stuck and rolled over on me like a stubborn log. I spent 4 hours with a sawzall and it was a nightmare. Now I always spray a ton of penetrating oil on the tubes the night before, and I use a slow steady pull with a hydraulic puller instead of rushing it. It still takes me a bit longer upfront but it saves me from those 6 hour messes where you lose half your day to a simple job.

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