How To Assemble The Brace X Line Running Tool

Today I’m going to assemble a two inch running tool. First of all, you want to install your dog spring into your dog housing, grease it up pretty good, when the dog rides down in there, put lots of grease on it so it slides freely, lay your piece on the side with the slot facing up, you have to grab your dog spring and collapse it, slide it into the slot, push it inside, reach in here and twist it so it slides up and down nice and easy.

Then we’ll take the dog spring using a hacksaw blade, push that down, turn your hacksaw blade in the little hole, we utilize these little recesses here to hold the spring down, install your split rings, the notch facing up towards you, slide it down so it locates the spring, turn the tool around, do the same with the second split ring, slide it in there, line it up, and install your locator dogs.

The first locator dog slides in. You locate the two tabs in the slots in the split rings, and I use a magnet to hold them in. Turn it around, do the same thing. Because you can’t reach through that side any longer, I use a screwdriver to push the bottom into place, install it, grab a magnet, and hold it in place.

Now it’s ready to install your mandrel. The mandrel and the top sub are a matched set, the slots have to line up when you assemble it. So threaded side down, set it inside there, let it rest on your hacksaw blade, and as you set it, you can take off your magnets now, and then just pull your hacksaw blade out. If everything went properly, it should slide right up into place. It’s in the assembled position now.

Now you’ll grab your locator dogs at the base and pinch them to make them come out a little bit, slide it back towards you until you can see the recesses where the segments go, put some grease in those two slots, you want to install your segments.

You always want to install these segments with the tapered sides facing the bottom of the tool. If you don’t, it won’t trip in the selective properly. So install that, rub the grease around a little bit to try and keep it held in there, turn it a little bit, grab the other one, slide it in there, put the grease around, then gently slide that back up over top, lock that into place, then I install it in a vice here, clamp it at the top of the dog retainer.

I drop a screwdriver through the slots where the retainer dogs go. That’s just to stop this from rotating. Install the core spring onto the mandrel, grease the threads here, grease the threads here, throw some grease on your spring, your spring retainer housing, we’ll throw some grease inside there too, it installs over the ends, slides up over there, and we’ll take the top sub, put it on here, start threading it on, this’ll collapse the spring.

When you get to the point when you can no longer thread it on any farther and this doesn’t locate yet, so what you do is remove the screwdriver, squeeze your locator dogs which allows the tool to move forward, and then you can thread the spring housing onto the retainer housing. Once that’s tight, you can pull it back to lock everything back into a non selective position.

At this point, if you're going to run this in a well, you tighten this, but for this purpose I won’t right now. So then we’ll bring it back this way slightly, clamp the end of the mandrel in the vice, make sure you do not crush it because you just need to align your two slots here. Using a wrench, we’ll tighten that up, make sure they’re aligned evenly, check that with your retainer that it slides through, and it doesn’t yet so we’re not quite there.

Still not quite there. It slides through freely, so the tool is aligned properly. Take this and put it in the vice with your windows facing sideways here. We’ll install the retainer dogs, Put grease on the back of the sharp edge of these retainer dogs, slide them into the slot, make sure they locate on both sides, install your core, it slides in, now we’ll take the retainer, install it through the core through the top sub, and align the retainer pin hole.

The retainer pin is a three sixteenths by three quarter inch spring pin and it just goes on inside there. Start it in, and I always use a larger punch than the pin to make sure that when you install it all the way, it’s not in too far. And you can slide your core back and forth to make sure it’s correct. Slide your whole tool this way and then we’ll function test it to make sure it trips into select.

So put a screwdriver in the slot here and put some tension on it while you squeeze the bottom of the locator dogs which allows them to come out of the recess, trips into selective mode, slide them to make sure everything is functioning properly, the core doesn’t move. To unset that, you can grab the tool, trip it into non-selective, and everything slides perfectly. You can also install it on a lock to function test it to make sure it works at that point as well. And that’s how you assemble a two inch running tool.