Lister H3 Water Pump

Finally got myself something to drive, I’ve been waiting for a pump to turn up near by and seeing as this was only an hour away I thought I’d have a go. Today I’ve set to and stripped it down as much as I can, the only thing I haven’t yet moved are the brass bungs so I can remove the valve washers. I think I might replace the main pump shaft/ram and cross bar, the shaft has a fair amount of wear to it and the cross bar looks like someone’s machined it with an angle grinder. Not a huge task, I've got the equipment to do the work. Id like to get it as near to perfect as I can mechanically so it pumps properly, but cosmetically I'm going to leave it as it is. Should be a fun project for the next few weeks.

Hi Matthew that/s a nice bit of kit I/m sure with a few hours of grafting it will turn out a good un

So this weekend we managed to remove the brass bungs eventually, not an easy task as I'm sure anyone who's worked on these will know. With a fair amount of heat cycles and dousing with penetrating oil they finally cracked. The method we used was clamping the milled square drive in the bench vice, putting the pump on it and then using a 5 foot scaffold pole up the ram hole. First attempts with the adjustable spanner and scaffold pole resulted in the casualty below. Now I just need to get some bits on order and hopefully delivered before the Christmas break. It shows how tight they were that we managed to twist the nearly inch square drive.

Sadly miss use of a tool will result in its failure, the fixed jaw should take the strain not the moving jaw. you can clean the plugs up with a file and make them fit a slightly smaller spanner, when you reassemble the plugs wipe them with grease to make them easier to remove next time and it will help stop corrosion from forming making them stick again.

Maryalice

Thank you for the advise, I’ll certainly be making sure they don’t stick again. The spanner wasn’t a high quality one so I’m not too upset about it perhaps Santa will bring me a nice Bahco one for Christmas, that won’t get abused.

Earlier in the week I went to my steel suppliers and got some material 1 1/8" for the cross shaft and 2 1/4" for the ram, 15" of each cost £30.18 inc vat. Today I set to and machined the new cross shaft. The ram will have to wait for now, despite what I said before about it not being a problem to make, drilling an 1 1/8" hole straight through the middle is a bit more than my machines can cope with, so I might outsource that to a local firm if they are willing. I've reassembled the pump temporarily so I'm hoping to get it pumping tomorrow. I also fitted a new set of valve washers.



New ram in waiting.

She pumps. Leaks past the ram a bit, but that’ll be the next job.

Nice work Matthew. Congratulations.

Looking good,
Is that pump fixed or just sitting on top of the bin? I had an occasion once where my H1 pump was dragged towards my A type due to the belt taking wander off the pully, thankfully no damage to anything apart from the trolley and a knackered belt, I make sure everything is fixed down now, it was not a nice experiance.

Chris

Thank you both.

Yes, it was just sat up on that bin. I didn’t go too far from it, in case it started to wander, but the weight of it, it stayed where it was. I’ll be looking for a set of wheels in the new year and getting a trolley made for it. I’ve found a nice galvanised oval tub behind the shed, so I’ll be setting it up around that with some appropriate iron pipe work. Can’t wait to get it out to a few shows next year.

I have a H3, its frozen solid with rust, I have not spent enough time at it yet to get it all slackened out, its on my to do list.

Sounds like a good winter project.  I was lucky with this one that everything came undone easily except the brass bungs.

I think I’ll be pulling mine apart again over the Christmas break, I need to get the new ram machined to length so I can get it drilled in the new year.

Had a very lazy time over Christmas, but I got into the shed and machined the new ram to length today and drilled the cross shaft for the split pins.

Had a look through what I'd got and found that I could fit a morse taper drill into an R8 to Mt3 adapter, unfortunately the largest drill I have is 28mm which is just under .6mm under size. I'm almost there though, whether I skim the cross shaft to fit or ream the hole to size I've yet to decide. New packing is on order and then I can start to reassemble the pump for the last time.