I've been having trouble with leaky keg poppets

It sounds as if it's getting caught, which could mean the rubber part has worn. You'd see that though and it'd be obvious. Or perhaps it's compressed a bit and that's allowing it to get caught somehow. And, of course, another option is that the spring has lost some of its spring. You should be cleaning these fairly often, but if you're having trouble it wouldn't hurt to replace a few pieces.

 

Are you still using the original spider poppets that came with them? Or are you using the replacement poppets?

 

They can be kind of a pain to replace...but a whole lot easier and a lot less tears than cleaning up 4 gallons of an vanilla-coffee imperial milk stout from the bottom of your kegerator....

 

I hate to make you worry...but I have lost more beer through picnic taps than through bad poppets.

 

I think the moral of the story is to keep the beer hooked up to the tap and drink

 

I had/have the same problem. I restored a BevAir that had just a single tower. I then step bit'd a new place for a second tap. Then got rid of it all and made a 4 tap tower outta PVC and stocked the SOB with 4 kegs. Haven't looked back.

I have around 10 kegs laying around with or without beer. It's a great problem.

I tended to use those spider poppets until your problem started happening, or general leaking when I was purging/testing them. I popped them out with some strong suggestions using a metal shaft that fit inside. Replaced them with with generic spring poppets. I sometimes run into them not seating the best, but have adjusted my technique of holding the entire post (with generic poppet in it) upside down in my hand and securing dip tube into it. Then placing the dip tube into the slot and sliding down into the keg.

 

Great tip, noted!