Raw Water Pump Impeller Replacement

[svHyLyte]

Replacing the impeller in a water pump">raw water pump is one of the routine maintenance tasks most every boat owner has to deal with from time to time and most will agree, doing so can be a pain in the neck, particularly if the pump is in an awkward position. Most difficult is getting the vanes bent back to slip the new impeller in place while needing to align a center spline or match a key-way to a key in the drive shaft.

Recently, an acquaintance of ours posted a note on his and his wife's cruising Blog of a trick he learned from a local mechanic in Marathon, as pictured below:



While it may not be entirely clear, this is an impeller with the vanes bent back and held in place with a plastic zip-tie. With this arrangement, the impeller can easily be slipped into the pump housing and the drive spline or key aligned and engaged. The tie is then pushed off the vanes by the action pushing the impeller into the housing, or can simply be snipped and extracted.

I've been fighting impeller battles for many, many years and one would think such a seemingly obvious solution would be self evident but, at least to this old dog, it wasn't so I thought the idea would be worth sharing for the benefit of other similarly challenged old--or young-dogs.

FWIW...

[Cotemar]

Great Idea.

Maybe use a picture like this to help show the Zip-Tie detail.

[SVNeko]

Gonna try it