Water Impeller Replacement

i have a '71 martinique with a h.m 302. last time i had it out, it almost overheated. so i started replacing hoses, and sure enough the hose before the water pump was litterally falling apart, and blocking the entrance of the pump. so i got all new water hoses. pump still didnt work. so i took apart the water pump to find my impeller litterally 1/2 the size its suppose to be. so its time to replace that.

so heres the problem. the guy at the marine told me you have to pack it in the pump the way it rotates, or it will burn out first time you fire it. so i got on here and did a search and saw that not only should i have seen which way it came out, but also which side was up on the pump. i of course did neither of these things.

my question is, how do i figure this out? is there any easy way of telling which side of the pump is up, and then which way the impeller goes in? i would really hate to piss $35 away over something stupid.


any help would be awesome! and sorry about the spelling. thanks

makes me feel better about the direction not really mattering. i think i have found a way to match the up to up and down to down based on a mixture of paint and rust markings. kinda a sad way to figure it out, but about the only thing i can think of at this point.

if i do put it on upside down, how will i know its wrong? will it sound diffenrt, or . . . . . .?

I have not been on because I'm still out of electric-boat is stuck on the lift    If you have the original crank mounted Jabsco, the straignt outlet goes up,the curved one is the inlet which points down

Jeff,
Go to the link I provided above. The key to the proper flow direction is the cam inside and the rotation.

Maybe the PO had a bad habbit of running the engine without water?

ny_nautique wrote: Theoretically I could run it in my driveway, forcing water into the intake from the hose, and determine the direction that the pulley is spinning. Then take it off and insert the impeller with the fingers pointing the right direction. Agree?

I wouldn't go too crazy worrying about the fingers. It's nice to have them going the right way, but they are not what determines water flow.

The problem arrises because CC (and PCM etc.) used the same or similar Sherwood pump regardless of engine rotation. But then, oriented the body of the pump to be appropriate for what rotation the engine is. So, the same pump can be used for either rotation, but you have to orient it correctly for your application.

If you lost track of where the set screw (used for reference) was pointing, then the best thing is to use Pete's reference link.

thanks everyone for the help. i just got it all back together and it seems to be working fine.

thankfully when i pulled it i left a hose on the suction end. once i realized that it was just a matter of seeing which way the belt turned (counter clock wise) and the rest was just getting it back together.

my original impeller was so jacked i could hook a hose up to the motor, turn on the hose, and water would come out of the exhaust. when i replaced it, i turned on the hose, and kept blowing a water line off. i couldnt figure out way and was starting to get p*ssed till i realized with out the impeller spinning, no water would go anywhere. so i started the motor, then turned on the hose, and it seems to be working great. i'll be doing the bucket test to confirm but so far so awesome.

Not given,
That impeller is one of the worst I've ever seen!! Someone's been running the engine without water!

not given (Metallman56),
Fill in your profile if you care to. You may have not noticed but here, on CCfan unlike other sites, we have a tendency to go by actual names and not screen names. Maybe it's because we're just "old fashioned" (I'm one of them!! ) but it's just more personal! I never like to call one of our new members "not given" but I do it to see if they will fill in the blanks/profile info. Pictures are always a big plus as well as an addition of your boat/history to the diaries section.

Welcome to CCfan - It's the best!!!

Here's part of the seal kit. The other part is the white ceramic piece inside the pump.


Old impeller, before removal. It helps to put the impeller in off a couple of clicks from the woodruf key and rotate to bend the blades then push on the shaft.

rob has always told me that running it out of water is "the worst thing you can do to it" but he never told me why. to be honest i doubt he knew or knows. and i have always ignored him because well, its just an engine. and just like any engine you can run it without water, just dont let it get hot. i never knew about the impeller, well until i saw what was left of mine lol.

green lake definatly doesnt sound like something i would enjoy. every year rob comes home and says how cool it was and seeing all the boats was really neat. and that lasts for about a month. and then the truth starts coming out little by little. its a huge lake, its pretty much always rough and choppy, and that doesnt exactly sound like fun to me. especially sense its a 5 or 6 hour drive, through chicago, and in my v10 dodge ram that gets 8.4 mpg when pulling the boat.

dont get me wrong i would love to see all the boats and think it would be really cool, its just rough water and $4 a gallon gas prices, makes it something i would rather not experiance.

i have tagged along with rob to clinton, which is the lake in the middle or illinios with the nuke power plant. i met alan (no idea the screen name, pulls boat with motor home)and a few others. so something thats a little closer, and on a lake i thats nice enough to ski on, i'm all for.