Newbie alert!! questions on kegging

[swampstander]

Hi,
I found these boards about three days ago and have been glued to them ever since. What a wealth of knowledge! I hope I am not putting the cart before the horse but I have some qustions on kegging. I have not brewed any beer yet but my 1st kit should arrive any day. I recently rescued 5 soda kegs and a co2 bottle from a ditch behind a rodeo arena. There are about 5 more that I hope to get today. Here are my questions
1.I noticed three kegs have a pressure valve in the lid and two dont. Is no pressure valve a prob and if so what can I do about it?
2. Are all of the repair parts such as gaskets and valves interchangeable and if not how can I ID what I need?
3. The co2 bottle has been laying on its side with the valve open for at least a couple of years. Do I need to clean it in any way before use?
4. I also have a smaller helium bottle(see picture). Can I have the valve replaced with a co2 valve to use as a back-up?

Sorry for the length and thanks in advance for any replies.

swampstander

[Stodbrew]

Hey Swampstander-

First of all, welcome! There's a lot of great people here.

1. Pressure relief valves in lids are nice, but you can always release pressure through the gas inlet valve on the other kegs, although, much more slowly. Sometimes lids are interchangeable, however.

2. As I recall, the repair parts are different for the types of valves, whether pin lock or ball lock. You can tell the difference in them if on of them has little "pins" sticking out from the valve. I believe there are two on the product side and three on the gas side, or vice versa. Ball lock valves have nothing sticking out from them. Pin lock kegs were generally used for Coke products and ball lock for Pepsi products.

3. I would take the CO2 tank into a welding supply shop and see what they say. Being open for a couple of years in kinda scary.

4. Same thing about the helium bottle. I'm not really sure.

Sorry if I'm not overly clear. Hope this helps!

Cheers!

Steve

[Fast_Eddy]

Helluva find - welcome to the board.

[danno]

Originally posted by swampstander
2. Are all of the repair parts such as gaskets and valves interchangeable and if not how can I ID what I need? gaskets are interchangeable... Poppets and posts are definitely not interchangeable, Northern Brewer (http://www.northernbrewer.com/keg-repair-parts.html) has pretty decent pictures to help you ID what you need, even if you don't buy them there. Note that gas-in posts (at least on ball lock kegs) are the ones that have the small notches on the side of the post, that's how you distinguish them from beer-out posts...

Originally posted by swampstander
3. The co2 bottle has been laying on its side with the valve open for at least a couple of years. Do I need to clean it in any way before use? find a welding supply store that does exchanges instead of fills, see if they'll swap it for you...

[Jughead]

Originally posted by swampstander
...Are all of the repair parts such as gaskets and valves interchangeable and if not how can I ID what I need?


You could strip out the parts you want to exchange, and send them with your parts order, so that the supplier can just exchange like for like.

I doubt you will ever have a beer with enough pressure to pop the relief valve, so don't worry about as a safety issue, the valves are really just convenient for dropping keg pressure.

Welcome to the board.

That's a pretty sweet find!

[swampstander]

Thanks for all of the advice guys. I saw these items laying in a pasture a couple of years ago and kind of kept it in the back of my mind. Once i started researching home brew I started seeing this type kegs for sale on websites. When I went to get them they were actually thrown into a trench waiting to be covered up. There are four or five more that are waiting to be retrieved. I think they will all clean up fine.

Thanks again,
swampstander

[barley ben]

Other than being dirty, they look pretty good. As far as replacing the gaskets, you could just take them to a Homebrew shop and buy what you need. This way you can match them up on the spot. As far as the tanks, ditto to what's been said above. You just need to get them checked out. I know co2 tanks are stamped and need to be checked every five years so a welding shop can do this for ya. And I like the swap idea. Clean it up and try swapping it at a welding supply shop.

[swampstander]

I finally got back to pick the rest of the FREE soda kegs up this evening. There were 7 more for a total of 12. Two of them are unuseable as some morons threw them into a fire and burned the plastic bottoms off of them and charred the tops. I will be robbing those of their parts and tossing them. They still have soda syrup in them. Do you think they would have made a loud noise once that syrup got hot enough to start boiling.:eek: