How To Assemble The Brace X Lock

How to assemble the Brace Tool X Lock assembly.

Hello, I’m Clint Bowers of Brace Tool and I’m going to show you how to disassemble and reassemble a 2.31 X lock. So the X lock has three backup rings, two which are female, one which is male. You unthread the packing mandrel from the key retainer, set that to the side, you pull back the fishneck, it unlocks that and allows our keys to fall out of our dog, then the fishneck can be removed from your expander sleeve.

The expander sleeve can be pushed back into your key retainer, it’ll come out the bottom. There’s some tension there from the key springs. So you have to use a little force to get that out of there. The key springs will fall out.

So to assemble it again, you take your key retainer and install your expander sleeve. I like to put my expander sleeve in to make sure it moves freely. There’s nothing binding there. No burs or anything like that on it. You take your key spring, slide it into the slot in your expander sleeve, then the little tab goes into the hole in your key retainer.

Make sure they’re aligned or you’ll have difficulty assembling. Same with the other side. And I just hold tension on it with my forefinger and my thumb, and make sure my holes are aligned, then with my other hand, put pressure onto your expander sleeve and push it into the window housing key retainer. It’ll be in there, those will be held in place now.

You can use ingenuity to get that all started by threading your packing mandrel into there. You don’t have to do much hammering and whatnot. Slide that on so your threads are exposed on your expander sleeve, and then install your fishneck onto your expander sleeve, then you can pull your expander sleeve into the open position, thread your fishneck on to the rest of the way, remove your packing mandrel, and install your keys.

You want to make sure that when you install your keys, the tab on the key springs slides into the window of your key and not just behind it. if it’s in just behind it, your lock won’t function properly.

At this point, I like to give it a little bit of a tap and put some spring tension in my keys so they’re not falling out when I install my packing mandrel until the threads are flush, then I’ll pull my expander mandrel to the fully open position to make sure my keys are being held in firmly.

You don’t want them flopping around loose. If they are, your key springs may need to be replaced or adjusted. When they’re in properly, you should be able to tap your expander sleeve down to that position, and you’ll feel the tension on the key springs and they pop back out. This allows them to locate your X profile when you're running a well. Your backup rings go on, female first with the groove facing the bottom of the packing mandrel, male, then female.

At this point, you tighten your fishneck on, tighten your packing mandrel in, and install the desired equalizer assembly or whatever apparatus you're going to run on there, possibly an instrument hanger if you're running gauges, or whatever. There’s many, many options for you there. Thank you.