Fixing stuff that I didn't know was broken

 Kerm here,

The air conditioner fresh water pump has been a bit crabby lately.  It was taking longer and longer to prime and probably shouldn't need priming all the time anyway so I took it apart to see what was up.  For people that don't know about boat air conditioners there is a sea water pump that cools the condenser.  In a home unit there is a fan that does this job.  Using sea water keeps the units small making them easier to hide away in small compartments.

Anyway,  as I dug into the pump it became apparent the impeller and it's associated housing was well worn.  I just figured that I would get a rebuild kit and take 10 minutes to repair.  Nope.  The pump was obsolete.  Bring on more money.  The new pump arrived via UPS and of course the mounting and hose sizes were different.  OK, I can handle that.  New mountings were made up and while working on the plumbing one of the bronze fittings broke.  It had degraded from corrosion so badly that the wall thickness was about the thickness of a sheet of paper.  Yup, that would have sunk the boat.  So off to West Marine for parts.  It might be noted that the fitting was probably the only one below the water line that had not been replaced over the last 3 years.

OK, plumbing replaced, now the electrical.  Problem three, the old pump was NOT grounded.  Tesla was turning in his grave.  As I was hooking up the ground in the electrical box I noticed burned connectors and the associated outlet was cracked.  I keep spares of boxes and outlets as I am slowly replacing all of them in the boat with ground fault (GFI) units so I didn't have to go to the hardware store.  After all this the pump self primed and the air conditioner seem to be more efficient.

In the end I burned a day but found 3 things that could have either electrocuted someone that touched the pump, sunk the boat or burned it up.  I'm thinking it was time well spent.  

Before all the worry warts out there think we are going to hurt ourselves out here, rest at ease.  This pump was one of the last mechanical / electrical / propane things that has not been rebuilt, replaced, revised or eliminated.  I'm not about to get cocky but there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.

The adventure continues.  Today I'm installing the new inverter for the ice maker and when that's finished we're adding a salt water wash down pump for cleaning fish and spraying off muddy anchors. O' boy.