If you've not already read it, Part 1 has a lot of context for this pump - what it is, where it came from, etc.
First step: I need to get the pump out and back up to the house - let's go!
Ah, firster things first: I'm going to need some imperial sized sockets...
Later, with strangely-sized sockets, breaker bar, wire brush and various other tools in hand, I head down with my buddy Tony to get the pump out.
It seemed like the base of the pump might have been covered in bitumen or similar, but with that chipped away we managed to get the sockets on, and, incredibly, once the nuts were cracked off with some gentle tapping on the breaker bar they were largely able to be undone with fingers alone.
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| 74 year old bolts, I hope I look that good when I'm that age |
Of course a couple of the nut/bolt combos on the drive flange were a little more recalcitrant, presumably due to being underwater since they were installed, but with a bit of perseverance we got them all out.
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| All nuts removed, and pump lifted off the anchor threads |
It was then "simply" a matter of carrying the pump up a very steep 20m bank to the footpath above, and from there a relatively short wheelbarrow trip to bring it all home. Fortunately, and despite the blood lost to the local midge population, my buddy is a lot stronger than I am; being made almost entirely out of cast iron, this thing (the pump, that is) weighs a ton.
Once back at the house, we gave it a quick rinse and started the work of tearing it down:
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| It is a little-known fact that some breeds of dog are quite handy with an adjustable spanner |
Once again, all the nuts, bolts, and studs which held it all together were well greased and it all came apart relatively easily. The biggest hurdle, other than all the earlier ones, was splitting off the vulcanised rubber seals which live between the various unions, and had turned into a fairly effective glue.
Once apart, it was interesting to find that there were a number of brass parts. Below you can see the grid valve assembly which was hidden inside the large bollard-shaped air vessel - you can't really tell from this photo, but other than the thick circular rubber valve in the middle, this centre section is all brass:
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| Where there's brass there's muck, lad. |
As luck would have it, a chap with a sandblaster happened to be here for unrelated reasons, and very kindly offered to blast clean all of it for free. He got a couple of chocolate biscuits with his cup of tea.
The results were remarkably good:
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| Freshly blasted bits |
Encouraged by this, I spent a while polishing up the brass - the blasting had left it looking matte, which had its own appeal, but I felt that bringing some of the original shine back would be nicer:
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| Shiny bits - more work to be done here, though |
I also took a flap-disc sander to the ironwork:
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| Looking much better |
I needed to repaint and protect the ironwork, lest it rust again in short order. After a great deal of research, asking the experts (thank you Tom from
promain.co.uk, and my buddy Bradley from
A-Class decorating), and learning terms like
"non-saponifiable", we finally settled on the approach:
1. A layer of zinc to act as a sacrificial anode, I used
Zinga paint. This stuff is 96% zinc, and dries to a matte finish:
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| Really wanna zinga-zin-gah? Oh dear. |
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| Tacky |
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| That's going to look lovely against the brass! |
Charles Doble, of
Green & Carter, has kindly sent over a set of replacement gaskets plus the two rubber valves that are the heart of the pump, along with a nice new set of bolts, studs, nuts, and a new snifter valve:
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Rubber soul of the pump
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At this point I realised I had made a slight mistake - the original studs were still in place, and worse, two of the 3 small studs used to hold the grid valve assembly in place had corroded and sheared. Fortunately, the large studs came out easily with the "double nut" trick, but the smaller broken studs were going to be trickier. I tried a few approaches to removing them:
- The "double nut" trick. Unfortunately there wasn't enough thread left of two of the three studs for this to work
- "Easy outs" - I think these things have only ever worked once for me, but I gave them a go anyway, and to no avail
- Vice grips & copious quantities of Plus Gas - no dice, this just removed more metal from the studs.
I was
about to go for the "weld a nut to the stumpy stud" approach, but came across a
stud removal tool I'd not seen before and decided to give it a try:
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| Best tool evar! |
This is an excellent tool, it removed all three of the small broken studs without breaking a sweat (or indeed, any more studs).
With the old studs out, it was time to start assembling the pump; putting all the bits together, I ended up with a very pleasing sight - here are the upper and lower parts of the pump fully kitted out with their respective accoutrements:
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| Mmmm, shiny. |
All that remained was to bolt the air vessel (right side, in the picture above) onto the ram bed (left), atop the gate valve assembly (top left), take it back down the 20m bank and pop it back into the ram house in the woods. Home, sweet home:
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| Back home, in Sunday best. |
The particularly eagle-eyed reader will note that I've put the exhaust outlet on in a different orientation than it was originally; I figured that this "straight through" arrangement may help with directing the spring water through the pipe in the wall and out into the stream. I suspect that the original orientation was chosen in order to allow easier access to the bolt head which is hidden under the outlet channel.
We'll see whether I'll come to regret this new configuration, OTOH ratchet spanners are now a thing...
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