WATER PUMP REPLACEMENT

[fnshrmaster]

http://www.checkmate-boats.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_mad.gifMy water pump on my XRi took a crap yesterday.Has anyone done one and how hard are they to change?Do I get just the impeller or the whole rebuild kit?Who has best prices on parts? Thanks Kurt

[fnshrmaster]

http://www.checkmate-boats.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_mad.gifMy water pump on my XRi took a crap yesterday.Has anyone done one and how hard are they to change?Do I get just the impeller or the whole rebuild kit?Who has best prices on parts? Thanks Kurt

[JW]

Well........It all depends. I think changing the water impeller is easy, but I've done a few. The hard part is putting the lower unit back on, that can be a pain. Parts that are lined up when you drop the lower unit never seem to be lined up when you reinstall it.....
There's a few tricks you gotta know when reinstalling the LU. Tricks depend on brand. For a Mercury XRi, it helps to have a friend slowly move the flywheel back and forth by hand while the lower unit is slowly slipped back up into place.

You won't know if you need a whole water pump until you've gotten to the impeller. If you've got wear, then change out the whole asssembly. If it's only a failed impeller, then just change that.

The impeller is made of hard rubber, and the cavity that it resides in is smaller than the diameter of the blades, so you'll need to know how to insert it into the water pump properly too. I like to get the water impeller installed, then slide the pump housing down to just over the impeller, and then spin the driveshaft in 'forward' by hand to help manuever the blades into the housing. Speaking of the blades, if your old impeller is missing chunks of the blades when you get to it, you should try to find the pieces. Larger chunks of the blades can lodge in water passages and block off part of your cooling flow. You may not know it until too late. Big chunks missing from the blades that have ended up in the block sux.

Water impellers really should be changed every other year as general practice for us short season northern dwellers, just to make sure we don't lose chunks of well-used impellers in the engine. Preventative maintenance. If you don't want to tackle the job, any good marine mechanic can have it changed out in an hour.

[fnshrmaster]

Thanks JW,I am going to try and tackle it this week.I found a good thread on bass boat central that is very detailed that should help too.This forum is great! Thanks again,Kurt

[jkeiper]

If you put the motor in gear first this helps with the alignment during reinstallation of the lower unit.

Regards,

Jim

[fnshrmaster]

Job went great!No problems.Thanks for the help guys. http://www.checkmate-boats.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Kurt