Water pumps and fuel pumps

Friday being New Years Day was a public holiday and thus an extra day to work on King Malu. We achieved a lot, but it was frustrating work. Tim and I had planned to get the bilge water pumps working and Ken came down to remove the fuel injector pump.

We have a Fork York marinised engine. It's the same engine as the original diesel engine in Ford Transit vans and minibuses. But... with a different fuel injector pump. It looked an easy job to remove a few bolts and it would slide out. No way... it was a task and a half to remove the injector pump. When removed we then took off the back end of the water pump to see if that would make it easier when it came to put it back in. Sludge. Light brown sludge. And the bearings on the water pump were lax, so we need to remove and replace the water pump.

When I say water pump I mean the primary water pump. There are two water pumps for the engine - one for the primary system and one for the secondary. The engine is cooled by normal tap water with anti-freeze, which we call the primary circuit. There is there a heat exchanger rather like the radiator in a car which is connected not to air but to sea water, which we call the secondary circuit.

Now the water pump was fitted to the engine with a number of bolts. Undo them and it will slide off easily. No way... one of the bolts was cross threaded and into an almost inaccessible mounting hole. That took another hour to remove.

With those two tasks complete Ken took off and Tim and I returned to connecting up the bilge pumps. Aiii... one of the brand new non-return valves had stuck and it didn't flow water at all so the first bilge pump we tested failed totally.

The cable we were using [the old cable from the bilge pumps] was bad and unreliable so we left for the night a bit frustrated but determined that tomorrow we would win with the bilge pumps.