Moved from Cropredy
So, after months of repair work, I’ve finally moved from Cropredy.
Water-pump
I seem to remember doing a post about this not so long ago. My engines’ water-pump had definitely failed and needed replacing. The waterpump I bought before Christmas and I hadn’t got round to fitting didn’t fit and the man I bought it from at ukboatyard.co.uk wasn’t prepared to give me a refund.
I hadn’t used it but the pulley-wheel wouldn’t fit on the pump because the screw-holes didn’t align. This meant. It wasn’t possible to drill out accurately because the pump housing in the way.
I was told to ‘drill the pulley wheel out’ by the guy at ukboatyard. Very useful. Now I have a new and useless waterpump, pictured above.
New, new water pump
That’s right. 1 for sorrow, 2 for joy. Except not really joy in this case. This one didn’t fit either!
This time it wouldn’t fit in the engine casing. The pulley-wheel did, however, fit on fine. After 2 or more hours loosening screws, wobbling round and trying to figure out what was stopping it. I came to the conclusion that it was developing some abrasions on the edge. These were being caused by me trying to force it, and it making contact with the engine casing which was preventing.
I took out the old waterpump, put it on some notepaper and drew a trace around the edge of it with a pencil.
I then took the new water pump and traced that also. That gave me some idea of where the shapes were not matching exactly.
Rather than send it back for a replacement, (no guarantee that that would fit either!), I decided to use brute force. A very useful tool in challenging engineering situations. I took the angle grinder out, put the pump on the bench and ground 3 mm off the edge of it, which turned out to be the wrong edge! Ground some more of the other correct side. Took about 4 minutes of grinding in total
This seemed to have the right effect. Snapped in like a charm.
From then on in, it was all downhill. Fit the fanbelt, tighten it up. Put some new coolant in. Start the engine. Run the engine a bit. Put some more coolant in. Tighten the fan belt a bit more.
Job done!
Took months to do it though.
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