Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
My galley hand pump is leaking at the base. Has anyone experienced this. Is it as simple as replacing an o-ring to fix the leak or has anyone had a more costly experience in order to fix the leak. Was looking for some insight before I go to the trouble of disassembling the unit.
The base of the metal tube or the base of the plastic housing?
On mine (ca.1982) what sealed the base of the metal tube (faucet part) was cork, of all things. The plastic base had a rubber gasket accessible from underneath. Have to remove the faucet from the countertop and remove about a dozen screws.
We had the same problem. If you are looking for quick fix West Marine sells the gasket kit for the whale pump. It has all the o-rings and gaskets you need. Our problem turned out to be a worn cork. The kit replacement had 2 o-rings. No more leak for us. Easy fix.
I orginally set out to repair mine (original 1977 vintage), but after looking at the deterioration inside the pump decided to replace the entire unit. I'd suggest you pull yours out and have a look inside before making a decision.
As noted above, buying this sort of stuff from an RV supplier is a lot cheaper than from the marine stores.
I replaced the rings on the lav pump a few years ago and it worked for awhile. Now it is leaking from around the pump handle ring again. I'm thinking of replacing with electric pumps instead and I'll buy at the local RV store.
I pulled it today. Real easy with a ring tensioner on the underside to unscrew and pull out. After smelling the mildew of the faucet, I decided to take the advice of visiting the local RV shop and picked up a chrom replacement hand pump for $33. Thanks for all the good advice.
Not sure if anyone cares about this thread anymore, but my post really belongs here and I need some advice. I wanted to rebuild my Whale Mark IV flipper pumps as they both were leaky and they're pretty old. So for $40.00 I bought two "overhaul" kits, only to find out they should really be called "the pretty stuff and one O-ring". There wasn't much in the kit and certainly no where near enough to rebuild these pumps, so I went in search of the rest of the O-rings at the local hardware store. I also bought vinegar to kill the lime that has collected on them and another cleaner to get rid of the mildew. So now I have about $55 into the project and about 3 hours driving around finding stuff. I had disassembled one of the pumps to figure out what I needed, the other was still sitting intact. I opened that pump up and found out it had been assembled wrong and the parts inside were virtually ruined. Now you have to understand, I bought this boat only when it was nearly new, so no one had opened this pump up since it left the factory, so the factory is where it got screwed up. The gasket between top and bottom was not even screwed in, it was shoved inside and not attached to either top or bottom. The only reason this pump had ever worked was because they had packed it full of some greasy goo to seal it up. As I remember it got very light duty after I bought the boat because it didn't work well and I eventually quit using it. Sorry to go on about the pump, but it was such a horrible mess and such a garbage product I had to say something. This pump probably does not represent the average Whale product, so don't take this as a dig at Whale.
So, bottom line is that I've got about $55 and a lot of time into rebuilding my Whale pumps and I'm nowhere close to being able to rebuild them. I'm wondering if anyone has found a replacement pump that drops into the same size hole and assembles without too much trouble. I'm in the process of rebuilding my whole plumbing set-up and the pumps are the last pieces I need. Any advice would be helpful.
I tried my faucets for the first time recently too. I had to suck on them to get them going..then they blasted water...but leaving them for a few minutes stoped them from working. They didn't seem to leak though. Seems like almost zero resistance on the pump handles...are you guys saying there's o-rings inside that could/should be replaced/greased? I like washing in "clean" water but there's no money this season for new faucets.
Yeah, a rebuild on one of these pumps requires a gasket, a rubber ring seal, a cup seal, a rubber valve washer and four o-rings. The kit I mentioned contains one o-ring, one handle knob, one spiggot cap, one gland bushing and one securing nut. So out of the eight things you need to make it pump properly, stay primed and not leak, you get one. I haven't checked on the cost of a kit containing all of the other pieces, but at $20 apiece for the kits I got, I'm not going to investigate that route. I would really like a couple of new pumps with same size of barrel that will drop in without too much fuss. From reading this thread it looks like there are some alternatives, I'm hoping someone might identify specific models that work.
I pulled both of them out, put an electric pump in behind the battery box and got two nice faucets from defender, all new plumbing, now I can actually use the sinks with both hands free. I have about 180 bucks in the whole deal, not the cheapest way out, but a really nice upgrade.
I stupidly broke the faucet off of our galley pump, so we decided to simply replace it after an epoxy fix of the plastic fitting failed the first time Rita used it. We replaced with some solid brass hand pumped faucets from New Zealand. We liked it so much we went back and got a second one to put in the head.
Jeffriday, is your system now pressurized or does the pump come on when you use a faucet?
I did use the rebuild kit on both the galley and head Whale faucets. The galley faucet (same as on the C25) is now leak-free. The head one has starting leaking again.
The Admiral would love to not have to pump and try to catch water in her hands at the same time for face washing. An electric system sounds intriguing and would earn me major points!
Knighwind, The pumps I bought have a handle position that allows the water to drain from the faucet back to the tank. Maybe that's what going on with yours. I thought I was stuck in a time warp with this post for a sec.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Happy D</i> <br />Knighwind, The pumps I bought have a handle position that allows the water to drain from the faucet back to the tank. Maybe that's what going on with yours. I thought I was stuck in a time warp with this post for a sec. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Interesting. I tried both pumps yesterday and they worked great!?!! I think I left both pushed back...maybe that's the "non-drain" position.
I got tired of looking for cheaper replacements for my flipper pumps and bought a couple from Defender- Whale MK IV. I have all of the pieces now to put my fresh water system back together, including carbon filters for both head and galley. If only there was a way to easily cool that water...
Thanks for trying to get back to me. I'm new here and just "officially" joined the association this morning, so I'm just figuring out where things are and didn't realize I could contact you directly. Next time I'll know what to do, but in the meantime, no harm done, I figure if these new pumps last as long as the last ones, they will only be costing $5.00 per year to operate anyway.
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.