Hi Mark,

        I’m glad to hear I was not alone with this challenge. 
        I’m comfortable I didn’t do any harm.  Those clamps are pretty powerful, and it only needed to move a extra tiny bit to fit. 
        I’m also glad to hear in advance that the silicone hoses may need a different clamp or a different solution.  I wonder what people have done for those.

Eric Caron 

> On Nov 8, 2022, at 7:29 PM, Mark McCulley <mark@MARKMCCULLEY.COM> wrote:
> 
> Hi Eric,
> 
> I think that tang you cut off the spring clamp is meant to keep the clamp from opening too far and perhaps losing some clamping force.
> 
> I had the same problem you had, what I did was to put the clamp loosely on the metal pipe and then slide the hose over the hump and then open the clamp up and work the hose over the hump while holding the clamp open. Yeah, it was a bit of a pain. I also found that some of the silicone hoses were thicker than the rubber hoses and were too thick to use a spring clamp.
> 
> -Mark
> 
>> On Nov 8, 2022, at 3:56 PM, Eric Caron <ericcaron96@COMCAST.NET> wrote:
>> 
>> One of the challenges was that the spring clamps, though the correct size would not open enough to get over the nipple hump on some of the connectors.  I had to take my disk cutter and cut off the protruding metal tune on the side that the fork on my special pliers attach.  Once that was gone the clamp would open just a bit more and all was good.