One more macerator issue

[booster]

Weather turned good and we took the Roadtrek out of the garage to do a final check of all the new stuff, dual dump, solar, antenna, etc.

All was pretty much as expected on dump system, back flushed nicely, gravity dump fine, new level sensors reading. We then switched over to macerator, and got no water out, pump running, but nothing out. Looked underneath and water was running pretty hard from the splash shield under the pump, even without it running. Took a peek inside the cover and water was coming out of the weep drain at the bottom of the pump (lucky it was on the bottom now) and also from all around the gasket between the inlet fitting and the pump. All our testing earlier had been done with our old pump, in case some debris from all the work found its way to the pump, and it worked perfectly every time, so this pump had never been installed until the final assembly. The pump that was leaking was a brand new, 180 degree rotated, one we bought to put in because the old pump was over 6 years old. I had tested the new pump on the bench to make sure it ran, and confirm rotation direction, but hadn't pumped anything with it.

Pulled the pump out, which is pretty easy on the new system, maybe 10 minutes. Took it apart to see what was going on and found that the gasket between the inlet fitting and pump had basically turned into a gooey mush and squeezed out of the flanges. By one of the screw holes in the gasket, the screw had hooked the gasket and ripped a chunk out it. I found the chunk in the shaft seal, thus the leak out the weep hole. The pump was full of what looked like grey moly grease or anti-seize. Big globs of it on the seals, impeller, entire pump cavity. Whatever that grease was, must not have been compatible with the gasket that failed and deteriorated.

I put the old pump back in and everything worked as it should, except we got a big blob of the grease out the discharge hose when it started pumping, it must have been stuck in the hose from the other pump. Waiting for a replacement new pump to be approved and sent, hope it is not full of grease.

I mention all this because I know there are some folks that carry a spare pump, and if their new spare was like this new pump, it would not work.

If you have a pump, I would suggest looking into the discharge fitting with a flashlight to see if you see grease, you can rotate the pump with the manual override with a screwdriver at the end of the motor. If it is hard to tell, you can take a Q tip and wipe inside and see what you get. The whole pump end is held on with 3 screws, which you can check and if they are quite loose, the gasket may be deteriorating. Ours were very loose.

I hope we just got somebodies ill advised experiment to try to help new pump dry running failure, and there aren't many of them out there.

[markopolo]

That's too bad. Good that you had the old one ready to go. Hopefully you'll get no problems getting a new replacement pump sent to you.

Thanks for the info. I might buy a macerator pump this year so will inspect it in store.

[booster]

I am hoping that the problem is limited as this was the 180* rotated pump, and very very few folks even sell them. I wish I had looked for a date code on the model number sticker on the pump, but I had to send that in for the warranty claim. A replacement should come right from Shurflo, so I would hope it would be as new of production as possible.

[Caped Crusader]

Which brand pump, Flojet or Shurflo.

[booster]

Shurflo