That dripping forward portlight

[Ron Applegate]

The portlight over the forward berth has been leaking. I bought some gasket material that was too soft and made things worse. Then I found "original" (t-shaped) gasket material for the ABI ports on line and bought some. It turns out that it looked exactly like what I had taken out of there in the first place. Short of the long story is that it still leaks. This is the portlight on the sloping forward face of the coach house. Any suggestions to stop the leak? My thought is that when the port is dogged down, the "t" part of the gasket flares away from the port on the outside and lets water in behind the gasket. If I don't get better advice the next step is to add some silicone behind the gasket to try to stop water migration. Have any of you had this problem?

Ron

[Mickey Panayiotakis]

Ron

are you sure you're leaking from the gasket and not some other place (like glass or port bedding)?  The gasket material is pretty flimsy and won't last long, but if you just installed it you should be leak-free for at least a few months.

mickey

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:08 AM, Ron Applegate <montana.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

The portlight over the forward berth has been leaking. I bought some gasket material that was too soft and made things worse. Then I found "original" (t-shaped) gasket material for the ABI ports on line and bought some. It turns out that it looked exactly like what I had taken out of there in the first place. Short of the long story is that it still leaks. This is the portlight on the sloping forward face of the coach house. Any suggestions to stop the leak? My thought is that when the port is dogged down, the "t" part of the gasket flares away from the port on the outside and lets water in behind the gasket. If I don't get better advice the next step is to add some silicone behind the gasket to try to stop water migration. Have any of you had this problem?

Ron

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[Robert Benner]

Ron:

Meredith had the same experience. 

We used 1/4 inch packing normally used in the stern gland.  It is firm but works like a charm.

Bob and Connie

Meredith, #100

On 8 May 2013 06:08, Ron Applegate <montana.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

The portlight over the forward berth has been leaking. I bought some gasket material that was too soft and made things worse. Then I found "original" (t-shaped) gasket material for the ABI ports on line and bought some. It turns out that it looked exactly like what I had taken out of there in the first place. Short of the long story is that it still leaks. This is the portlight on the sloping forward face of the coach house. Any suggestions to stop the leak? My thought is that when the port is dogged down, the "t" part of the gasket flares away from the port on the outside and lets water in behind the gasket. If I don't get better advice the next step is to add some silicone behind the gasket to try to stop water migration. Have any of you had this problem?

Ron

--

[Ron Applegate]

It leaks when water is poured into the "well" around the port and is allowed to stand so it's either the gasket material or the glass. I'm pretty sure it's the gasket though as the gasket is wet around the back side. Interesting idea about the packing material......

[Dave Newberg]

We had the same issue. We acquired perhaps the same new gasket material as you, designed for the ABI ports, and still had a drip. This was about 6-7 years ago so it's difficult to remember everything we did to make it work. But as I recall, the gasket is a bit oversized and made of rather dense rubber, making it very difficult to compress the upper part and sides enough to allow for good contact on the critical dripping lower section. After fiddling with the gasket placement, installing some newer heavy SS dogs so we could crank it down (small drop of teflon lube helps), and just working at it repeatedly with a bit of elbow grease, the port eventually seated into the gasket and it has worked perfectly ever since. We open and close it now with abandon, although we do give a bit of extra effort into dogging it down since any drip would be directly over our faces, and the outer frame slopes the wrong way, causing it to catch and hold water.

Best of luck

Dave

On May 7, 2013, at 11:08 PM, Ron Applegate wrote:

The portlight over the forward berth has been leaking. I bought some gasket material that was too soft and made things worse. Then I found "original" (t-shaped) gasket material for the ABI ports on line and bought some. It turns out that it looked exactly like what I had taken out of there in the first place. Short of the long story is that it still leaks. This is the portlight on the sloping forward face of the coach house. Any suggestions to stop the leak? My thought is that when the port is dogged down, the "t" part of the gasket flares away from the port on the outside and lets water in behind the gasket. If I don't get better advice the next step is to add some silicone behind the gasket to try to stop water migration. Have any of you had this problem?

Ron

[Ron Applegate]

Thanks Dave. I'm going to leak test it again and figure out where the water is coming from for sure and go from there. I'll let you know next week how it works out.