Pulling the top on a T5-fixing rust

[EatenByLimestone]

As many around the Northeast will not so fondly remember, this past year has had more than a few rain showers and storms. It looks like I got some rain coming in my ridge vent (probable) or around the flashing around my Class A (possible). I have a fairly new metal roof. Since this stove is in a cabin, it isn’t seen every day and water sat under the cast iron, rusting the top a bit. I caught this just after we had a night in the 40s, telling me it’s time to give the stove a little love for the winter. Here’s a thread documenting how to pull the top and sides off a T5, and probably all the T series.

Tools used:
3/8” ratchet
11mm socket
Lots of 3/8” extensions up to 18”
Phillips screwdriver (#2?)
Penetrating oil

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I disassembled the side panels to allow easier access to the top. Pay a bit of attention to the shim arrangement as they appear to be a bit different on each bolt. I hit each bolt with penetrating oil because I really didn’t want to break one off behind the panel. I probably didn’t need to do this. They all turned freely. I found the brackets are slotted that hold the bolts, you don’t need to remove the side bolts completely.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

The top bolts need to be removed completely, but it’s not hard to access them once the sides are off. The screws on the rear heat shield worried me. Who knows how all those heat cold cycles would affect them. They came out without issue.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Evaporust was available to treat the rust. Personally I would like to have used phosphoric acid as it covers the bare metal with a coating. I may pick some up over the week.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

There’s an unused bracket, I wonder which model this is used for?

 

[Highbeam]

Fun to see what lies beneath.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

What do these bolts do inside the collar? Do they hold the collar onto the stove? Is this why there isn’t a weld bead around the outside of the collar? Or do they hold something inside up?

I’m not in the mood to disassemble the inside of the stove today. Maybe one of you has the answer. The parts diagram doesn’t show the collar as a separate piece.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I’ve got solid progress on the rust. I’ll leave the Evaporust on until tonight. Then I’ll let it sit for a week to dry out. I don’t want to leave any moisture in there when I paint. I just wire brushed the joint to get a good look at everything.

As an aside, look how tight my key damper fits in the pipe. The stove runs fine shut down with this. It makes me wonder how much air is really needed moving in and out of these stoves to run.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Well, time to pick this project back up. I picked up some phosphoric acid and retreated the flue collar area yesterday. I want to make sure that I converted and coated all the rust. This morning I played a torch over the inside of the flue collar for a while to boil out any remaining moisture before a top coat of new paint. Last thing I need it to flash a bit of moisture into steam under a brand new coat of paint.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

1st coat…

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Time to do a little summer cooking! I don’t want to smoke up the cabin when I actually need the heat!

 

[EatenByLimestone]

cabin looks like a Cheech and Chong movie inside. It’s now at a nice clean burn with wavy heat waves coming off the chimney cap.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Ok, the stove is back together! With a little fiddling I was able to get all the panel gaps even. One thing I wish I’d done was labeled which side panel went to which side. It’s not as useful remembering which washers/shims went where if the casting you’re fitting is not the same.

I do worry that I didn’t tighten the bolts on tight enough or over tightened them. I’m not sure how much to tighten them. I don’t want to overtighten and crack the side panels on a heating/cooling cycle, and I don’t want them to fall off the stove. I guess time will tell on that one.

I think I’ll replace the door gasket while I’m doing all the maintenance.

I’m not sure I need to, but I’ve always had a little blackening of the glass in 1 lower corner. I might as well get it all done while I’m motivated to.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I went to go get my gaskets today. My local dealer disappeared, so I had to look into the next closest dealer, about an hour away. I was last at that dealer 5 years ago or so. I picked up some of the secondary manifold gaskets.

Last night I pulled up their website to get the address and noticed they weren’t boldly displaying PE stoves but other brands were front and center. Hmm. In the small print at the bottom of the page he mentions PE. I decided to call before driving.

It turns out he doesn’t really do PE anymore. He liked the stoves, but he did not like the NY distributor. He started using a NH distributor, whom he liked, but PE did not approve. He said it came down to if he had to use the NY distributor he wasn’t going to sell their stoves. I guess we can see how that went. Maybe not coincidentally, my local dealer (now gone) used to get their products from a guy in Boston if I remember my conversation with him correctly from 10+ years ago. Also not in the great state of NY. I know of 1 other shop that was in my area that used to sell PE, but doesn’t anymore. I’m not sure if they are still in business, I never had any contact with them.

But anyway, I wanted OEM gaskets, so he ordered them for me. He had rolls of the generic stuff, but it’s such an infrequent purchase that I might as well go OEM.

Manifold gaskets were $2.99 each, I got 2 as it looks like my dealer support is effectively gone. I’ll be making my own if I don’t get them now, lol… or be driving to other states.

Door gasket was 45 or so. Can’t remember.

Glass gasket was like 35. I also can’t remember.

With shipping it came out to $92.

He’s going to try to ship them straight to my house, but warned me that the distributor might send them to him anyway. Either way, I’ll be fine. It’d be nice to not have the drive, but it won’t kill me to make it.

It was quite an unexpected conversation.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I had not received the gaskets yet so I did a follow up call yesterday. I don’t think they’d placed the order yet as the shop said they hadn’t been invoiced yet. Called back today and they’d received the invoice. I walked out of my house and there was a box on my doorstep! They overnighted them! Lol.

Looked At the gaskets and it appears they have a tape/glue strip on them! Any idea if this glue is worth anything? Should I try the glue and see how it holds up? Worst case I can see is I have to put the door gasket up again, or it falls down on a reload, lol. I guess I would have to use those welding gloves and do the burning log shuffle to pitch them outside.

 

[begreen]

The glue is ok for the glass gasket but I don't trust it for the door gasket. There have been occasional reports of loose door gaskets on new PE stoves. This may be the reason why. Instead, I used red RTV on our stove's door gasket.