Comccoy, from what I read it looks like you left out the white backing plate
I definitely had them on but the 7/16″ rubber foam would not seal. I added the suggested additional 5/16″ and that sealed perfectly.
We did out first test camp this weekend and as I burned some midnight oil on Thursday night I ran in to an issue with Bill’s design. I am not saying in any way it is a flawed design. I think it is a great design. But I ran in to a huge issue.
When I went to insert the threaded rod, on 2 of my vents the rod got partway through and they bound up. It would not go forward or reverse out. I used pliers to try and twist and free it and the 3 plastic support rods that hold where the nyloc nut is, sheared off from the twisting I tried to do. This happened on 2 of my vents. I ended up knocking the broken vents out with a mallet, replacing them, and going this weekend with the CLC screw on original design. And I have to admit I was pretty irritated at having to get out to open and close them.
When I believe happened is that some of the nylon sliced off as I threaded the rod in and then slid up and bound the threads so tight that they could not move. My theories for this are:
- I did not clean the ends of the rod I cut properly. I admittedly know very little about this so I tried to angle them like the screws I have. I uses a small file then some sand paper to smooth it out.
- I screwed the rods in from the inside. This means I hit nylon first. It is quite probable that once they hit the metal threads it was not aligned with the nylon ones it dug in first and cut some nylon off and pulled it in to the threads.
- I have cheap nyloc nuts from lowes. quality from lowes tends to be iffy so the nylon may be of suspect quality.
- I just got unlucky twice.
To be clear I still think it is an excellent design. I still plan on going with some version of it. Maybe even the same but with me trying to screw the rods from the outside in and educating myself on how to shape the ends properly. I also might try and figure out a way to not use nyloc as once a piece gets loose and binds that glued in nut the vent is pretty much toast. The $12 for a new vent is not terrible, but the time it takes to clean the sealant off the hole and start over is several lost hours. I am still very excited to get this working.