[ernst]

Originally Posted by ernst

Thanks, Al and John! The order will go out to Moyer today or tomorrow.

Here is my latest update. Last weekend I finally had the time to tackle the installation. It went mostly up to plan except for one snafu: I have the Indigo FWC system and I knew that the pump installation was a little bit more involved than just loosening two bolts because one of them holds the bracket for the raw water pump. I was prepared for that but not for the fact that the bolt that was used for that was too long to fit between the pump body and the hole where it is supposed to go. It turns out that the MMI pump has a slightly thicker flange (by about 2mm) which creates this interference.

My first idea was to cut off the bolt but I thought I check with Tom Stevens before doing that. He answered again within a couple hours (!) and pointed out that I am already loosing about 2mm in length because of the thicker pump body. He suggested instead to grind down the pump body.

Of course this made a lot of sense. So this is what I did. After that, everything went very well (OK, there are always things that go wrong: I actually overshot a bit with my grinding and as a result, the fan wheel of the alternator started striking the sheave of the belt, requiring repeated taking apart of the whole thing until I had everything back to where it needs to be). The pump is working very well now.

There is, however, a new problem: I noticed a tiny weeping of oil at the flange. It is really minuscule but I do not want to have any oil going into the bilge. I tightened both bolts as much as I dared (and that is really very tight!) which made the leak even smaller but it did not go away. I was flabbergasted and had no explanation. I ran out of time and in the car on the way back I found a possible explanation: I had mounted the pump dry, using just the gasket provided. But the old pump had quite a bit of gunk at the flange, some goop someone (not me) had used with the old gasket. I realized that I had scraped that off on the pump side (in case I will use it as a spare) but not on the motor side! So I wonder if there is some of that stuff on there, preventing a tight fit.

So I guess I have to take everything apart again and clean up the motor side of the flange. But before I embark on that project, I have two questions: Assuming that my idea is correct, that there is some dreck on the flange, did I ruin the new gasket? Should I pre-emptively order a new one? And second, I mounted it dry. Should I put some goop on the gasket when I mount it again?

Thanks for any advice!