He originally reported a lack of water pumping, and after soaking the screws holding the bottom of the leg on, I got them free to get access to the water pump. Here's what met me when i got the pump casing off:
Yep, an impeller with hardly any blades on it. Of course to fix it you swap the impellers, but what about missing bits?
Here they are, jammed in the water outlet:
I pulled them out with a pick and being thorough, checked that all the bits matched up to the missing parts on the impeller, so there weren't any bits still floating around.
I also did a general clean up of the water pump inlet, which was choked by salt and sand and also cleaned any deposits off the inner faces of the water pump so the impeller didn't get torn to shreds.
Once everything was re-fitted, I gave it a run and voila! water pumping through the tell-tale!
With a bit of a clean of the carb, it started on the 2nd pull! Nice.
Hopefully this Spring we can get Jim's boat back in the water as I've got a gudgeon and pintle set for the rudder I got for him last year.
I picked the set up for £6.50 + P&P
Barton ones too. Bargain.
One issue is the shape of the rudder and how to fit the gudgeon and pintle to it. The front is quite profiled, so some soort of block or wedge needs to go in to stabilise the front end. There's a lot of space and fresh air at the front:
I fancy rebating and glueing a couple of blocks in there to square up the front of the rudder where the pintles fit.
Anyway, another job for another day. The Outboard took up most of Saturday. Sunday I went to Ikea with the wife and son. Needless to say I won't be going to Gosport boat jumble next week. :-(
Good detective work on the outboard. Outboard certainly need to have fresh water run through them after every use - but this is not always practical if the motor resides on the back of your boat - but a thorough flush when wintering over would be the minimum I would think.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of wedges with the rudder gudgeons is a good way of approaching the problem.
Hi Alden, the outboard had slowly pumped less and less water, so it was a good bet the impeller had gone. The downside is I'd sheared bolts on a previous outboard of mine, so I was a bit wary undoing bolts on someone else's. Soaking them in penetrating oil for months helped I'm sure. With the rudder, I'm thinking rebating small blocks either side of the front edge to square things up will be the way to go. I'm no carpenter though, so there may be lots of epoxy filling in the gaps. :-)
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