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I have twin Cummins 6cta8.3, 480 in a 2003 Sea Ray 390 MY unfortunately with the Sherwood pumps. All good so far, but I am going to be replacing the impellers soon. The Port pump is very difficult to access and I’ve read on this forum to simply remove the entire pump assy with gear from the engine. Do I need to be concerned about oil running out? Any advice or tricks to removing and re-installing? Do the gears line up easily?
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I find it very hard to believe removing & re-installing the pump could possibly be easier than just swapping the impeller. The Sherwood impeller has threads built into it to allow you to use a common hardware store bolt to facilitate removal, no custom tool needed.
I would also recommend against replacing things ‘just because’–that will get expensive fast. If the pump is working fine, no leaks, etc, let it be. There will be plenty of stuff that actually breaks that you’ll have to replace!
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MV,
Welcome to the forum. My wife and I have an ’05 460 Dancer. Our beam is about 5inches wider than yours so I am intimately familiar with your quandry. Not sure if this is going to be helpful but I figured I would share. I have done each maintenance item on my own atleast once, and then made a choice as to whether I was going to do it on my own or pay someone to do it. Changing the impellers is one of those items that I am going to pay someone else to do since one is very easy and one takes a small nimble person to do. I am not a small nimble person….. We had new heads and the aforementioned SMX water pumps installed this past off season. When you order the SMX pumps, they come with an impeller in it, a spare impeller and a tool for impeller removal.
To Frank’s point about the Stubborn hoses…….. Home Depot, or any hardware store, sells “Hose Pick set”. I would have loved to have one of those kits a year ago. Those will help with getting the hose separated from the metal fittings on the pump. a Hose Pick and some dish soap are also invaluable in persuading the hose to go back on…….
We had ~700 hours on our 480CE’s when we had all of this done. From this point forward I will pay someone to change the oil and impellers as I am a tall, arthritic Not-So-Nimble human so getting down in there for extended periods of time does not work for my body. I also look at it as I am buying my own time. I can do the work but I have done the analysis and I will choose to have someone else do those tasks. If my engine room were different I would probably make a different choice.
“A man has got to know his limitations” – Dirty Harry
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replace with a seamax pump
No oil leakage and the gears are easy to align, even if you have to turn the pump’s gear a tad to line them up. While you are at it, I’d suggest you go ahead and replace the Sherwood pump with a new Seamax pump. You should find it a lot easier to replace the impeller in the Seamax pump than removing the pump for service as it includes a jack screw that simply pulls the impeller out of the housing.
Don’t forget, to remove the pump, you’ve got a couple very stiff and sometimes stubborn hoses to deal with as well as the pump bolts. In the long run, you’ll be better off with finding a way to improve access than removing the pump.
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