Cat 1010 clacking

[OurTown]

I removed the pickup hose leading down to the tank and laid it aside. Then I connected pressure city water to inlet side of the mesh strainer. Immediately after turning on the water I noticed a leak on a hose connection just at the pump inlet. The pump sounded much better with the city water pressure feed. I think the pickup hoses are probably original (17 years old) because they are not very supple anymore and they are just reinforced vinyl which is not really the best suction hose. The hose I replaced them with with is a Kuriyama Tigerflex that I bought locally a while back intending to replace them then. I think this is it:

https://products.kuriyama.com/viewitems/liquid-suction-4/h-series-standard-duty-pvc-suction-hose-3


The good news is that it is very supple and holds its round shape very well. The bad news is that you pretty much have to cut it off to remove it from a barb even if it has only been on for minutes. Because of that it seems like it would hold a much better seal to a barb than a standard reinforced vinyl hose. The pump sounds fine now after replacing them but it seems like it was a little smoother when I first rebuilt it. Maybe there has been some wear on a few of the seals from sucking in a little air for the last month.

 

[OurTown]

Here we go again with the clacking. It only seems to do it when we are busy but it is getting worse by the week. Is it possible that there is a very tiny leak in the pick up side that is causing this after a period of time? I'm thinking of replacing the hoses again and this time the mesh strainer plus re-sealing all pipe joints. If the foot valve is appears to be operating freely then should I assume it can't be the cause? Another thing that always bothered me is that the 1" hose gets necked down to 3/4" before it goes through the 1" mesh strainer and then back to 1" hose to the pump. Could that restriction add to any tiny leak that may lead to the sleeve o-rings (assuming) going bad prematurely? Do you guys recommend an 80 mesh screen? If I replaced the check valve then is there any recommendations for those? It appears to be a light duty nylon valve.

 

[OurTown]

I forgot to mention that last week I replaced the o-ring on the mesh strainer for the first time ever but of course did not fix the issue.

 

[OurTown]

Yesterday it was raining so I pulled the foot valve off the pick up hose and connected 40 psi city water to it. No leaks. Should I perform a vacuum leak down test on it? I ran all three bays for 10 minutes with the gun triggers held open and the pump sounded great. Then I ran one bay only with the trigger closed to see if it clack bypassing the most amount of water. Nothing. I don't get it. Could the pump be getting hot when we are busy and in combination with something worn in there cause this? If I knew that a new pump would remedy this then I would buy one but I'm concerned that the issue would come back.

 

[MEP001]

Yesterday it was raining so I pulled the foot valve off the pick up hose and connected 40 psi city water to it. No leaks.

Did you run the pump with pressure to it? If so, did it sound better? Or is that what you meant when you said you ran all three bays for ten minutes?

 

[OurTown]

Did you run the pump with pressure to it? If so, did it sound better? Or is that what you meant when you said you ran all three bays for ten minutes?

For some reason I did not think to run it with pressure and was just checking for leaks. When I ran it for 10 minutes it was all put back together lifting water from the tank like normal.

 

[OurTown]

Is this a symptom of a washed out head?

 

[MEP001]

In my experience, if the discharge manifold is bad it will either leak around the cylinders or pulsate, and/or the o-rings around the valves will fail. If the inlet manifold is bad I would think it would have leaked when you had 40 PSI to it.

Maybe it just has some air in it that isn't getting fully purged since it's lifting water? How hard would it be to add a tee to the inlet and plumb a valve with city pressure to it to make sure it's 100% primed?

 

[OurTown]

We are still having issues with this. A few weeks ago I replaced the mesh strainer and re-sealed all plumbing fittings on it. Nothing changed. When we slow down it is fine for many days but when it gets used a lot it is bad. Super Wash built hundreds of these washes with this setup so I want to think there is something wrong with ours. Before I buy a $1,600 pump is there anything else I can check? If I do buy a pump is there a better model than a flat valved 1010 for this application? (or a less expensive one) The 1010 seems overkill and I'm thinking Super Wash used it for commonality with the spot free pump on the automatic plus it would work for the other washes with more SS bays. Is a piston pump better a than plunger pump for lifting water? We are running 400 psi on three SS bays with #7 tips lifting about 3-6 feet from underground tank.

 

[OurTown]

This think clacks when only one bay is turned on and does not change if all three are turned on. Does it not matter because it is pumping the same volume all the time but bypassing all it is not delivering back to the tank? Is there a completely different type of pump that may work better for this application? It seems odd to use a pump like this down to 400 psi.

 

[copperglobe]

Sent you a pm