Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Gluing a cork gasket (grease seal, O-ring) that a hardware store might give you free if they had an old one on a shelf is not keen economic reasoning at its best. But it’s fun!

Glues are frontrunners in the bold claims department. What they say they can fix compared to what this tinkerer has successfully restored to one piece is a very lopsided ratio. Wood glue is an exception–perhaps because clamping is essential and furniture is easy to clamp. I resolved to exert some sort of compression on this project for best effect.

Here was the approach:
1) Find appropriate adhesive. Schatzlein Saddle Shop, where my wife had to buy something for her wimpy one-horsepower horse, had a glue that included cork among its adherables.

2) Get a form of appropriate size and shape to glue the thing on–but not to. Parkway Hardware had some plastic thing–spacer, insert, bushing–whatever the tray said that was about the right size.

3) Apply wax paper so we don’t glue our cork seal to the form. The cylinder was easy to cover: cut a thin strip, tape one end to the plastic thingy, wrap and tape other end to itself. The base was nominally more challenging but a washer on my work bench from the running lights we fixed in an earlier project was just about the right size: set washer on wax paper, trace with scalpel, slide over plastic thingy… Voila, non-stick form.

4) Apply glue to each end of each broken piece. Let sit ten minutes per instructions, press together. For proper fit I ensured each piece was in the right place and right-side-up.

5) Another thing Schatzlein had was these bags of small rubber bands, apparently used for braiding horses’ tails and manes. Packaging did not say “for use with broken old cork stuff worth about a penny.” But it worked anyway–only trick was getting the small rubber band properly seated around the tiny cork gasket without shouting.

6) Wait overnight. To my surprise, the result looked very convincing. Could glue-applications writers have entered a new era of credibility?

7) Final test was to fit our glued product…. Doh! While the glue bonded the pieces together nicely, it also took up a tiny bit of space at each of the four bonds. The result was a gappy fit. Sure, the metal skirt on the u-joint cap would probably have pushed it together and been perfectly adequate, but when you go out of your way in the name of minutiae, get it right!!

Here’s an undamaged gasket with proper snug fit.

(Coming up next: Recycling Your Wine Cork)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.