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Jun 15, 2020
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Been in the garage having a practise with 3-part compression reducers on 10mm Speedfit pipe and it hasn’t gone particularly well and i wonder what i am doing wrong?
I found that the olive (swapped a copper one for the brass one due to plastic pipe) and bottom part that pokes out of the nut were really tight and were marking the pipe upon fitting - see first picture. I tried multiple times with multiple reducers and olives, all with the same outcome. Is this to be expected / accepted?
The reducers i have are unbranded ones from Toolstation (i think) and wonder if this is the issue? They do stock (very expensive) Conex ones and maybe these are the better bet? I tried adding a dab of silicone grease to the pipe just to see if it helped matters, but it did not.
As an aside, would you put a dab of paste between the body of the valve and the first part of the reducer - see pic 2? Just thinking about possible failures and what options there are if nipping-it-up doesn’t work?
TIA
 

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Conex are a better olive but brass and guest say not to use brass olives. Also I say no paste on plastic.
 
Everything stays loose apart from the olive.
Apologies, i should’ve been clearer! I just placed the items on the pipe, without actually applying any compression. In doing this, i found that it had scored the pipe as shown in the picture. I expected a snug fit, but not so tight as to be awkward to get on and mark the pipe. I wonder if this is down to a cheap fitting and would be better with the more expensive option, or just par for the course with compression fittings and speedfit pipe?
 
Looks fine to me you could if your bothered polish the internal big reducer piece

Has no ill effect if it gets roughed up
Hi Shaun,
It was shaving very fine bits of the pipe off and that concerned me a bit. Just didn’t seem right.
it was the smaller part that protrudes from the nut that was the key contributor, along with the olive to a lesser extent.
i guess a polish might help, but are the Conex ones worth the extra as they are very expensive?
If you get leaks out of these things, is there anything you can do? I’m not sure if the conventional solutions (e.g paste) should be anywhere near plastic and I don’t know the likelihood of these things failing?
 

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