Somebody, Please, Take my Money

April 29th, 2016

The People who Want $15 per Hour are Robbing us at $8

Today I had a painful reminder of a paradoxical truth about tools: the more you buy, the more jobs you will run into which do not yield to them.

I came up against a sprinkler pump that tried to kill me.

The yard looked bad, so I called the pros. They sent out some nice guys who–I am not trying to be mean here–had that look you see when you go to businesses where they hire a lot of ex-cons. They said the motor was cooked, and when I started asking fairly basic questions, they got confused.

I was afraid they were going to charge me $500 and put in a Chinese motor. I love Asian tools, but motors are not where the Chinese shine their brightest. I wanted a Baldor or some other American motor.

The existing motor, which looks sort of Chinese, is probably under ten years old. The original motor probably lasted 40 years.

The motor was held on by four bolts. Child’s play.

I took a few wrenches out to the shed and started working. The upper bolts popped off instantly with a 9/16″ Gearwrench. When I went after the lower bolts, the wrench wouldn’t grab them.

I still don’t know what’s going on. Maybe rust deformed the bolt heads. Maybe the installers used weird bolts with funny heads. But nothing wants to grab them.

There’s more to it than that. The bolts are situated so they’re hard to reach, and you don’t get much swing on the wrench. If you could turn the bolts ten degrees at a pop, you’d be doing great.

It gets worse. A bolt head has to be a certain height before a Gearwrench will engage it. These bolts are too low. That means you need an open-end wrench. Because of the geometry of bolts, a wrench has to be in one of twelve exact angular positions in order to engage. Think about it. If you can’t get your wrench into one of those positions, youre…well, you’re where I was this afternoon.

The answer was a socket wrench, right? Wrong. The bolts were in a small space between a motor and pump. A socket wrench is thick, and sockets take up space. I was barely able to get a socket on one bolt, and when I started loosening it, it drove the wrench into the motor as it rose. Now the wrench was stuck in the pump.

I decided to take the pump apart and take off the motor and half of the pump. Then I could rotate the motor and get at the bolts. I removed the bolts and pried at the pump, and it would not budge.

Next move: a rotary tool. I got out the Proxxon and the big cutting disk (now small), and I started cutting into the motor to sever the bolt inside the aluminum end cap. The disk wore down pretty fast, and I’m still not sure I got through.

I remembered I had a Fein Multimaster. I stuck a saw blade on it and went to work. After maybe half an hour, I probably got 3/4 of the way through the bolts. I eventually decided I would die if I continued to the end, so I decided to cut the PVC pipes attaching the pump to the sprinker system.

Now I had a disembodied pump attached to a circuit breaker box with a rusty pigtail. Which I could not detach. The hardware was so corroded I couldn’t get it to come off.

Right now the whole apparatus is lying on the floor of the shed. Some time tomorrow I plan to take dynamite out there and remove the pigtail so I can bring the pump into the garage and remove the motor. After that, I’m going to beat it with a blacksmith’s hammer.

I found an old Baldor jet pump motor on Ebay, and it should fit.

The original motor on the pump (a Goulds XSH) was a rebranded A.O. Smith made somewhere in ‘Murica. I found a NOS job on Ebay, but it said “pool,” not “irrigation,” so it spooked me. I was afraid it was inferior.

Now instead of writing a check while lying in the shade under an AC vent, I have to put feet on the pump (someone had installed it so the PVC held it in midair), and then I have to connect the new motor. It looks like the old motor has a carbon steel shaft, not stainless, because there is a lot of rust. I strongly suspect the rusty threaded shaft will stick to the impeller, and then I’ll have to open the *#^@*@% pump up and replace it.

I also have to fix the PVC, which will take maybe four hours, including shopping.

I think I’m doing the right thing, because the old pump is very well made, and the new motor is top-notch, so I should be dead (with any luck) the next time it craps out. If I get a new pump, I think it will die in five years.

Wait. I’m not planning to be here in five years.

Man, I wish I had thought of that.

Okay, that was stupid. But at least I’ll be done with it.

It’s a shame you can’t write people checks and have them fix things correctly. I would love to give someone money to do this for me, but I can’t find anyone.

People complain about the job market. Maybe it would be better if they could DO SOMETHING.

Just a thought.

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