Raw Seal

One of Liam's jobs during his lunch hour this week is to refurbish the raw water pump. The cause of so many hours of trouble at the back end of last year.

The seals failed once more and leaked water onto the alternator which in turn failed and has led us to buying a new one after a botched refurbishment job by Vehicle Electrix of Lincoln. But that may well end up being another story altogether after what we have now found. More on that at a later date.

The refurbishment kit for the raw water pump comes with new bearings and a new shaft. The shaft on ours was a little worn which is probably why the seals failed and the bearings have been wet a few times now due to failed seals so time to replace them also. 

We are also going to change the plastic drive at the rear of the pump which we have found has a small crack in it and will likely fail in the not too distant future if we re fit it and whilst we are at it we might as well change the rubber impellor as well. There is nothing wrong with the one that is in there other than it has been in for over two years, the Speed Seal plate is clearly doing it's job. However whilst we are replacing everything else on the pump it may as well have a new impellor as well and then we hopefully won't have to touch the pump all year. Fingers crossed anyway. The current impellor will be kept as a good spare. 

It would have been easy enough to have avoided this job and just left it. The new seals we put in last year were not leaking again yet, but we knew that they would not last forever and having put on a new alternator we didn't want to run the risk of raw water leaking on this one and ruining it quite so quickly. It is a poor design that the raw water pump and strainer is so close to the alternator but I guess they had to squeeze it in somewhere on this really very busy engine.