Bravo 10 Pump Mod

[belizesailor]

The flapper valve on the intake for the high pressure (HP) chamber on my Bravo 10 air pump failed. No problem, I could cut another flapper out of old inner tube I keep aboard in spares, but I dont use the HP port. So I decided to modify the pump.

The way the pump is designed the inner belows for the HP port reduces air volume output of the low pressure (LP) port. This mod makes the pump into a single bigger volume LP pump (useful to me as my aging Caribe 10 RIB is now on its last useful season and needs daily inflation).
I thought this mod might be useful to others:

First, remove the internal high pressure belows. To do this remove one retaining band (like a big hose clamp) from one edge of the external low pressure belows (the exterior part of the pump you can see). Remove that edge of the external belows from the pump base (there is a ridge around the inside edge of the bellows which fits in a groove in the base...just carfully pry one section loose then the rest will peel out easily). You only need to disconnect one edge of the external belows for this mod.

The internal HP bellows is of similar construction. Remove both retaining bands from it and free the bellows edges. This will expose the internal pump spring. Compress spring and remove it. Remove HP bellows. Reinstall internal spring. Reinstall external bellows edge.

Plug low pressure output port. I decided to just seal this port with silicon so that if I ever wanted to return to original function I could just remove the silicon. I also went ahead and plugged the old LP intake port since it needed repair too, but I didnt need it to work for this mod (the old HP intake moves plenty of volume by itself). This also eliminates a point of failure (the LP intake flapper).

Now I have a big volume LP pump which is fine for inflating a RIB.

Pics attached.

These pics also show the replacement of the failed HP intake flapper valve with a bit of inner tube wall cut to fit. Another handy field repair to know.