Water pump

[Mark Deeser]

Wife and I went out Friday for a 3 hour cruise, Tow boat US brought us home. Tach went to 0, showed no charge, when I opened engine hatch the pulley on water front of pump was gone. I have an 86 Albin 27 FC with Nissan LD 28. I am not the most flexible person or the most mechaniclly inclined either. Have any of you preformed a repair of this nature? How much would one reasonably expect to get into? Do not know if heat exchanger would need to come off.
Any information would be very much appreciated, have the time and some hand tools. Missing our evening trips on the river. Thanks in advance. Mark.

[Panhdjoe]

I had the same thing happen on our Family Cruiser, Replacing the water pump on this engine is fairly easy. You will need to find the part with the pully on it. it probobly fell into the bilge. remove the pully and resue it. The whole job can be done with common hand tools. The pump is availble from auto parts stores, ask for a water pump for a 1983 Nissan Maxima with the diesel engine. it is a common pump that fits many old Nissians.

[Mark Deeser]

Thanks Panhdjoe, your post makes me feel much better, was afraid of getting in over my head. I just got a copy of a Nissan service manual, learned that the belt should not touch the bottom of the pulley, had no idea. What I don't know would write a book. Once thanks for your help.

[DesertAlbin736]

Had similar water pump fail last summer in the San Juans in WA state. Yanmar 3GM30F. Raw water pump seized when impleller vanes broke and jammed the pump. Engine trying to continue turning the pump destroyed the pulley and scored the pump shaft. We had just pulled out of Blind Bay on Shaw Island when the temp alarm went off. Instrument panel only has idiot lights, no gauges, so you don't know when an overheating situation is developing until the alarm goes off. Raw water pump has it's own separate fan belt, so it didn't affect the alternator or pump on the fresh water side.

Shut down the engine and "popped the hood" to determine what was happening and saw that the pump was toast. Luckily we were only a short distance out of Blind bay and Shaw Island has a ferry landing nearby. We have a hard shell dinghy mounted on snap davits on a swim platform, plus a 2.5 HP outboard for the dinghy. So I lowered the dinghy and kept it attached to the davits and installed the outboard. Then I turned the motor sideways and while my wife was at the helm I used our dinghy to "push" the boat back to the anchorage, sort of like skipjacks on the Chesapeake use "yawl" boats as tugs.

I had printed out addresses and phone numbers of all local Yanmar dealers before we left home, and the nearest one was West Sound Marina across the channel on Orcas Island. Naturally they didn't have a new pump in stock, but were able to order one to be shipped from Seattle to arrive the next day by UPS. So we put the boat on a state park mooring and chilled until the following morning then dinghied over to the ferry landing and took the ferry over to the dealer on Orcas.

But the pump they sent was the wrong one. Right engine, wrong version. Ours is a conventional prop, and they sent one for the saildrive version. Similar, but different enough to not be correct. It would have taken 2 more days to send the wrong pump back and and get the right one from the warehouse. So we called up the next nearest dealer, Tri County Marine Diesel in Bellingham, and they had the correct pump in stock. Only catch was there is no ferry service from the islands to Bellingham, only to Anacortes.

So the next morning , again leaving our boat on a mooring, we took the ferry to Anacortes, rented a car, drove 45 miles each way to Bellingham, picked up the new pump, drove back to Anacortes, dropped off the rental car and took the ferry back to Shaw Island. I finished installing the new pump by 4:30 PM (my Navy Machinist Mate training kicking in), and after 2 days and $539 for the pump plus ferry tickets and car rental later we were back in business. Once our boat was running again we took the incorrect pump back to West Sound and got our refund.

But we did not have to call for a tow. All's well that ends well.

[Mark Deeser]

DesertAlbin736, glad to hear things worked out for you, we are back on the water also. Found a nice little State Park on the Saint John River today, ( Hontoon State Park ) about 30 slips, great bath house, small store, walking an bike trails. Since we our over 65 the slip fee including elc an water is only $10.00 a day. May is near perfect boating weather here in central Florida, hope you and yours are enjoying you boat as we are ours. Thanks, Mark.