Cleaning A Graco Contractor II Gun. Repair an Airless Spray Gun.

Chris the Idaho Painter. In this video, we're going to show you how we take a Graco Contractor 2 gun, disassemble it, take the packings out, clean it, and put it back together. And in this task, you're just going to need a couple items. You're going to need a 5/8 inch wrench. I use a just an old toothbrush to do the cleaning. I use just Q-tips to get inside and clean the inside of the gun. Also got some lacquer thinner that I actually put into a cup to actually clean my parts with. And then I've got a very small tiny flathead screwdriver like for a pair of eyeglasses that I actually use to remove the O-rings. And then I've got some WD40 that when I'm putting the gun back together, I like to lube the gun. And I also actually have some O-ring lube that I like to put back on the O-rings when I put the gun back together. And I'm done with my 5/8 inch wrench. And going to get ready to take the two ends of the top of the gun off. And when you actually begin taking the fluid side section of the gun off, you want to make sure you squeeze the trigger. Squeeze the trigger cuz there's a needle and a seat that sets inside there. And if you try to unscrew this thing with the trigger let go, it could actually score the end of that needle. And then you'll actually get your gun possibly it'll possibly leak once you actually put it back together. So squeeze that trigger. Going to take Sometimes those things are on fairly tight. Loosen it up. Got it off. And I'm going to unscrew it all the way. And I got one part right here. And this part's got a little O-ring on it. And I've got a cup I'm going to be putting my parts in there. I'm going to take the other end of the gun off. And this this end of the gun's not essential to actually pull the trigger. I actually just hold the trigger cuz I'm squeezing onto the gun. So, I'm just holding the gun tight so it doesn't fall. Now, this end of the gun comes off. I'll just drop that down. There's a spring inside there. And now the seat, the needle and seat is sitting inside there. And you've got to take and press the needle out from the round side. It's going to be pushed out the back of the gun. A lot of times this needle's in there is in there pretty hard. It's gummed up and it doesn't come out. Sometimes you can push it out with your hand. Again, I just got it pushed out with my plastic toothbrush. Got that thing. It's pretty gummed up. And this one gun was leaking. were having problems. Couldn't get it cleaned good enough. So, it's got a lot of gunk and around it. And it's probably why it was sticking pretty bad. Just a lot of built up. It's been about 2 years since we cleaned this one. Just going to drop those parts. Now, I can just take and unscrew the bottom part of my gun apart again. Going to pull that apart. There's an O-ring on this part of the gun, too. Going to pull out my filter. I'm gonna take and drop all my parts in into lacquer thinner. I can begin cleaning those parts. Before I drop them into lacquer thinner, there's going to be three O-rings, too. There's And I'm going to use my little tiny flathead screwdriver. I also have a Pro Gold Pro Towels that I actually use to actually clean my hands while I'm working, too. they start to get too greasy and dirty. Pro Gold Pro Towels work excellent for cleaning your hands. And it's a citrus based cleaner on those towels. It'll take any grease and grime off your hands. So, I'm going to pull off the O-ring off the handle. There's a O-ring off on the fluid section part of the end of the gun. You got to be very careful to when you pull those O-rings off. This one just popped out not to damage them. Be very careful with your little tiny flathead screwdriver not to damage the O-ring. It just Now the O-ring's off this part of the gun. And drop that down in the lacquer thinner. The end that holds the spring in doesn't have an O-ring or drop my spring in. And then the packing part has a little tiny O-ring right here in the center of the packing. We're going to pull that off. You don't want to stretch them out either too bad. So, just barely just work that thing off the best you can. If you're going to be replacing your packings with new ones, it comes with new O-rings, so you don't have to worry about it. I'm going to try to clean this gun, put it back to together without putting new packings in. They're like $50 to $60. I'm going to try to put it back together, assemble it, test it with water. If it doesn't leak, we're going to go ahead and use it. If it leaks, then we're going to replace the packings. So, we'll let those soak for about 5 minutes, begin cleaning them with my toothbrush. And then once I got it cleaned, we're going to see I like either use a gallon can or one of these plastic little cups for cleaning and whatever is easiest and more convenient. It's been soaking in here for about 5 minutes. And I'll just begin cleaning all these parts with my toothbrush and get them all good and clean. Lacquer thinner loosens up all this latex paint. Makes it come off really easily. Now I've set up spent about 30 minutes cleaning my gun in my lacquer thinner solution and we're going to begin the assembly process. And I've got the needle seat packing right here. And I'm going to You got three size O-rings. And I'm going to put those O-rings back together. I'm going to use a little bit of my O-ring lube right here. Lubricate this very tiniest O-ring. I'm going to stick that back on the needle. And you can see exactly it sets right down here in this little flat spot. You can see right where it goes in there. Going to put that O-ring back on. The larger O-ring right here goes on the handle. Going to lubricate that one. Stick it back down the handle. And this O-ring lube will help you assemble the parts a lot easier, too. And I cleaned those O-rings, got any dry latex paint off of them. I clean them with my Pro Gold Pro Towel that has um a citrus cleaner on it and clean those O-rings. The middle O-ring goes on back on the end of the gun tip side. And you can see it just sets right in there. Going to stick that O-ring back on. Make sure there's no dried paint on it. You can see a little bit of dried paint left on this one. I'll just clean it off with my fingernail here. These are pretty standard O-rings right here on this contractor 2 gun. You can get some from Home Depot and replace them if you need to if any of them get damaged. So now I'm going to take my handle my on the gun. Going to set it down from there. We're just going to push it on. The O-ring's fairly snug. Going to take my filter that I've cleaned. Just stick my filter back inside. And then the side, the end, you can see sticks up and it'll set right in there. It grabs right onto the end. Going to screw my gun back down. And there's a pin right here that's going to get to a point where it won't go any higher. It's going to drop over that pin. Then I can use my handle. Once again, it's a wrench to tighten it up. Once it's good and tight, put my knuckle guard back on. And now begin assembling the top part of the gun. And our needle seat goes in. And it's going to drop in the back side. Going to take and lubricate the inside of the gun with some WD40. Put a little bit on the packing or threads prior to assembly. I'm going to drop that down. And you'll be able to see the slots. There's two slots inside. It's going to drop down, slide in, and it'll slide into the needle, pops out, and you'll actually see the end of the needle right here. So, once it drops inside there, make sure it's all lined up. And you actually see the um the sides of the the needle come out the side right here. Once it's in there, going to drop my spring down inside. Just screw the back cap back on loosely. My hand. I'll just take my 5/8 wrench, tighten that in back up. Tighten it all the way down. That's tight. Now begin putting the end of the gun on fluid section. Now when you're putting the gun back together, you want to make sure that you're pulling the trigger. Squeeze that trigger. Otherwise, you could score that seat. It would could possibly leak. Let's screw that down by hand. Take my 5/8 wrench while I'm pulling the trigger. You'll see. And then tighten it up. Make sure it's good and tight. Now you can release the trigger and it's all Check your trigger pull. And I like to take spray some more WD40 on the ends. Get it all lubricated cuz there's there's any leftover paint after cleaning it with the lacquer thinner. The leftover paint will dry up and get all hard and the WD40 keeps it from drying up. I squirt some down in the filter side too. And now our contractor 2 gun is ready to be put back on our pump. And I'll test it with water to make sure there's no leaks. If you get any leaks coming out of the end of the gun right here, then the the seat itself is either scored or got a nick in it or something. And you're going to want to replace the packings. The packing is about $50 to $60. We like to take clean it, put it back together, see if it doesn't like leak first and then go from there. This is Chris in Idaho. How to clean and repack a contractor too. Make God.