Good morning ,i tackled changing my inground liner this year with the help of your videos. I remembered everything but the walk in steps so I reused the old gaskets and flanges. It seems I have a slow water leak,the flanges are in pretty rough shape there split in 2 pieces at the screw holes, so my question is can I drain the water in the shallow end below the steps and successfully take out the old faceplates and install new ones? Will the liner stretch back to line up the screw holes. Also I seen on your videos the gasket was installed under the liner mine is on top of the liner attached to the faceplate, should I just stick with they way it was? ..thank you hope to hear from you soon. have a great holiday.
If you put a vac back going to hold the liner in place, and take out some of the water you may be able to do work on your faceplates. We always reuse the existing faceplates for steps though because they fit the pool. If you try to use something else chances are very strong that they won’t seal the pool like they need to. What I would do is caulk the strips with 801 (an underwater sealant) and one at a time if you think the strip or screws might be compromised, unscrew one screw – add 801- and rescrew each individually to help give you a better seal. Don’t just try to unscrew the seal strip and assume the liner will fit back in place, it probably will not.
Good luck!