I have a half barrel US sankey keg which I am supposed to empty, clean, sanitize, and refill. I was able to safely relieve the pressure, get the spear out, and even built a little recirculating keg washer to push PBW around it for a while. I was a little surprised at how easy it all was after reading about people struggling to get the spears out.
Once I got it all clean and nice I put the spear back in and started winding the retainer ring back in. Oh Lordy. I had a total of 5 minutes invested in figuring out how to get the spear out, so far I have 2 hours invested in getting it back in and have no joy. It seems like the O ring that seals the bottom of the spear to the neck of the keg needs to be compressed to get the retaining ring to circle around, but I don't see how I am going to do that short of buying a $600 o ring compressing tool.
I found some youtube video of people supposedly putting the spears back in, but the bastiges leave out the O-ring to make it easier to demonstrate! Arrrgh!
So have any of you figured out how to replace a spear?
