Bait bander as O-ring tool?

[Mokei Kagaku]

Background: Working in QA for an automotive tier 1 supplier, I have seen the use of professional and automated tools for mounting O-rings in grooves and on shafts for quite some years. Needless to say, the tools are used to avoid damage to the O-rings during assembly. The process involves spreading the O-ring just enough to slip it into place without chafing and/or rolling of the O-rings.  Vast empirical data have clearly demonstrated that the risk caused by the spreading the O-rings is much lower than the risk caused by sliding and rolling O-rings into position. 

So, for a couple of years I've kept my eyes peeled for an O-ring spreading tool cheap enough to justify buying one to use when assembling dampers to avoid sliding O-rings past e-clip notches and threads. Two days ago I stumbled over a tool called "bait bander" which looks and works very much the same way as a professional O-ring spreading tool, but is used for angling.  I wanted a good one, so I searched for the most expensive I could find, but found none costing more than 5-10 Euro and they basically all looked the same. Some of them had a rough surface to avoid the bait bands to slide off the tool and I decided to avoid those to ensure that the risk of damage to the O-rings is kept at a minimum. So I ended up buying a bate bander from "Fox Matrix" at 4 Euro! It may or may not work as intended, but with the tiny cost involved, I think it's worth a try. Sorry for the poor photos. Using the tool and taking photos at the same time was a bit awkward!

       

[Aerobert]

That's really interesting. I always though it can't be good for the O-rings to roll or slide them over the thread of the piston. Thanks for sharing. 👍

[Willy iine]

Interesting indeed.   I guess I've not had issues with o-rings tearing from the threads or e-clip slots as I use silicon oil (damper oil) before sliding the o-rings over those areas.  Even odder, Kyosho does not even oil their pre-assembled dampers and they have o-rings pre-assembled on their damper shafts (ie: Scorpion, Beetle, etc) with zero oil leaks.

[Gibbo78]

Agree, I do wince when assembling the piston arrangement, no matter how much lube you use, this is a good idea and will give the tool a go!  Cheers 

[Mrowka]

Note to self. Steal one of these.