hoser wrote:
Thanks for the valuable info I am sure their will be many of these needing replaced in the future as these machines age.
Here is some photo's (to help those future sight glass replacements) of the tool I used to press out the sight glass. I used a 1" long taper head 1/4" bolt for this, and any collar that fits a 1/4" bolt(so the inside of the reservoir doesn't get marred). It does not remove the outer ring, both mine stayed in after using this setup. See my first photos on how I dealt with that. I held the wrench on the angle and turned the vertical wrench in the photo to press out the sight glass. The metal behind the glass will be destroyed doing it this way so do not use this if you are just replacing the glass/crystal and want to use rtv. This is for replacing the entire pressed in unit only. I installed the new sight glass AFTER prepping the master for paint so I would not accidentally scratch the new lense, and installed the unit before painting because you will damage the paint hammering/pressing these in. I masked of the reservoir and sight glass to keep paint out and also installed a plug in the master bore(don't want paint in there!!). There are two pieces in the bottom of the reservoir that probably would not survive powder coating, why I chose paint for mine. Good luck with yours, it is a rewarding project for the do it yourselfer. TB