Raw water pump parts

[rick_bradshaw]

[warmrain]

I wonder if you could retrofit an entire new pump from another manufacturer...

~Cars

[mike]

Have you tried a commercial pump specialist? Quite often pumps like the Johnson are used in applications other than marine & spares are readilly available. They may be able to identify the make of pump for you even if they don't have the spares & point you in the right direction for parts or an equivalent pump.

Mike

[rick_bradshaw]

Okay. Getting back to answering things again. As I mentioned, I had a new shaft fabricated and for the "sling washer" found some gasket material of the appropriate thickness (most important) and cut a new one using a section of sharpened pipe and a large grommet punch at a local machine shop. The "impeller rub plate" I turned over and cleaned up and put back in with the previous inside out. It, also, is no longer available. I am currently laying in enough parts to provide a complete rebuild if needed using a combination of old, usable parts, new parts, and fabricated parts.

I have asked (email) dealers about a new pump of a different brand and have gotten no answers at all. It has just been as if they don't know and can't answer it so they ignore it. The latest just today.

The solution: get enough parts now and stow them away. Perhaps this will be the only time I will need to do this for 10 years or even 20. Perhaps not.

[warmrain]

How many hours on it Rick?

[rick_bradshaw]

Steve,

Haven't a clue. We have no hour meter on the engine so can only speak to the last 3 years. Definitely not thousands from us. However, the previous owner said only about 100 hrs per year for 19 years. And, if I believed that after the all the "odd" issues that we've had, I'd be an excellent candidate for buying beach front property 100 miles directly west of San Diego.

Perhaps this is the first rebuild but, given all the other issues, I doubt it. any ideas about how long these things actually last? I've never needed to rebuild one before.

One of the bad things about all this is that the bearings that came from Yanmar were bad out of the package. They were very noisy and rough before I ever got to use them. Switched to sealed bearings from Canada. Hopefully there won't be any negative results from that.

[warmrain]

Warmrain is close in manufacture date to your 33, though mine was one of the last Hansa boats, they both have the Yanmar 3QM30FG. The thing about this engine is that it hasn't been manufactured since the ealry '80s. When Yanmar discontinued them HC purchased all the remaining stock. They are rock solid engines and the core design for modern Yanmars that produce 3 times the HP.

The only thing is... we have engines that are hard to find spare parts for... One thing you might do is contact Yanmar dealers for used parts.

Warmrain has only 1300 hours on her engine and has not had any such issues. In fact no issues at all other than a fuel delivery problem I wrote much about that was not really engine related. While it is normal to have about 100 hrs/ty on a sail boat engine. This would be 2,200 hours and the engine's design life is around 15,000... So... draw your own conclusions...

The only think that I can think of is that the boat was used in areas where there was a lot of silt the that wore the pump prematurely...?

~Cars

[rick_bradshaw]

La Vita was used in the San Diego/So. Cal. area. I don't think that is too much of a high silt area. I did clean up the old shaft and it is scored a bit but I have it as the spare so it wasn't all that bad. I figured I'd get a complete rebuild and install so that I would have many years of hassle free running, at least in that realm. We've done the best we can and now we wait to see how it all works out. Hopefully, it will be many years before we need to get in there again.

Ordered some small spares that didn't come with the parts from that "other" dealer today. Was able to discuss the parts issue a bit. He said that some owners are buying older engines just for the spare parts. Other times some of the internal parts can be machined back into spec. Piston's, rings, and such are available and not so much of a problem. If it's a broken cam shaft or some such then it is just simply a new engine; unless you can find that used part.

The good news: It's a great old product.
The bad news: It's a great old product.

[pacific_princess]

I also had a recent scare when my engine was being professionally maintained and impeller being replaced, the engineers reported that the shaft of the pump was damaged and there were no parts for this model !! Anyway the good news is that after further reading of comments on this site I thought I was facing having to get the part custom engineered we found full set of replacement parts for the water pump which included having parts relocated from Yanmar in Melbourne Australia to Sydney and two hours of labour - cost = AU$875 or there was full complete pump replacement option - cost = AU$1520. Naturally being a poor cruising yachtsman I just went for the refit. But I thought I should let others know that there seems to be some part left in Australia should anyone be looking.

[rick_bradshaw]

Given your experience and my own, if I were you I'd play it safe and lay in a complete spare rebuild kit for the future. If it is difficult to find now, it will be impossible a few (many) years from now.

Here in Mexico, it was much cheaper to take the old part (shaft) to a machine shop and have it fabricated, same with the rub plate if necessary, use off the shelf bearings and cir clips. You can make the sling washer from local material but the proper thickness is important. The oil seals are the most difficult. I haven't found an alternate for those. I'd suggest a couple extra sets as these seem to be the parts that fail the most often. One set of my spare oil seals had to come from Japan. Not avail in u.s.

Good luck in the future with this. this one may last for another 20 years but being prepared now with something that works could mean a lot when/where the parts are not available at all.