hankaye wrote:Glenlivet, Howdy;
Interesting way you cobbled the regulator and attaching nut together
into one unit for your propane system. Any 'special steps taken to create it???
hank
Hi Hank. That's a 'flame king' propane gauge in line there, mated with a 90 degree male/female 1/4" pipe elbow to a standard 2 stage regulator. The regulators maker calls for it to be oriented vertically like this, the vent pointing down.
Those flame king gauges are notorious for having their plastic stepped seal washer inside the black mating nut, shatter after a short time' rendering the already almost useless 'gauge' absolutely hazardous by its leaking raw propane like crazy.
The 'gauge' depends on reading the unregulated tanks pressure to try to determine the volume of propane remaining in the tank, a failed engineering premise. I replaced the Flame King's faulty plastic nut unit with a sound one of the earlier internal left hand thread style for the tank connection, and when assembled like this the gauge unit with the 90 degree brass elbow is exactly the right length to get support from the 2 stage regulator resting against the side of the 20 pound tank via it's intended mounting bosses. Pure trial and error luck. Serendipity.

The gauge is still only good for telling you that you just ran right out of propane. Heck, I have a wife for that.
Oh, and one real useful application: If you shut the tank off and find that the gauge needle slowly goes down, you know you have a leak somewhere and it's time to get the soapy water spray bottle out.
