Float Bowl Gaskets

Last December I brought the RV12 back to my shop to do the Service Bulletins and mods that have accumulated. At the time I removed the carb float bowls to get the auto gas out of the carbs.

Now I am bringing the plane back to life. Over the winter the thin cork gaskets dried, warped and seem to have even shrunk a little. Is there a way to bring them back to life? Perhaps soaking in something to make them pliable again?

Why take chance? Order new gaskets.

I flew another 912 powered LSA up to Oshkosh from Colorado a couple years ago and had an experience that would certainly make me agree you should just replace those gaskets. We ended up with a pretty decent fuel leak from the left carb float bowl gasket. As it turned out we ended up diverting into Portage and found the leak before it was a huge issue but had to have a mobile Rotax guy come out and replace the gasket. The gasket was slightly warped. It is really simple to do as you know from already taking it apart. It is well worth the few dollars to replace them.

Carl

Thanks John and Carl. I will be replacing them.

Actually, I was planning to order six or eight to have them around. Then I saw $16 each on the Lockwood site. That means over $100 for six?..my "this stinks" meter went off. (It also goes off when I see the over $7 avgas price at my local airport.)

Then I wrote the above note.

After some more research (back to my BMW motorcycle days and the Bing carb stories from those) I am planning to go to the reusable ones from Real Gasket in Tennessee. They are $8 for a set of two (their number RG1311254764).

That is, unless the wiser heads here think that is a bad idea.

These are very interesting, maybe Roger Lee could consider giving these a blessing? My Bings are at the a/p, could someone who has their carbs closer look at these and see if they appear to be the correct ones? Thanks Keith.

http://www.realgaskets.com/files/popups/popup173.html

I just changed mine during annual of my CTSW. What you show in your link appears to be the same shape.

I put the rubber float bowl gaskets on a couple of annuals ago and have had no issues with them. I got them here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rotax-Reusa...iation_Parts_Gear&hash=item4aa6bef062&vxp=mtr

I have purchased float bowel gaskets on ebay. They were good quality.

Pete

I just ordered the Rotax bowl gaskets from Real Gaskets in TN....they do apparently swell a bit, but my plan for complying with the mandatory s/b is to buy two sets of these nitrile rubber gaskets, as the cork ones are disposable, weight the floats on my reloading scale, then when I repeat, let the old rubber gaskets dry out and put the rubber gasket spares in and so on and so forth, til Rotax comes up with a proper fix.

Note that for the bail carb type - you need the ones with the two holes - I don't think the single hole ones will work?

Use the regular fiber bowl gaskets. I have seen two sets of these rubber type gaskets over the last year fall apart. One was a good friend. He went to inspect his and they crumbled into his hand. Sometimes trying to save $5 isn't worth the risk. Bing uses the cork gaskets from the factory, but they don't seem to hold up, especially if you pull the bowl a time or two.