A WASTE OF TIME

Sometimes you just have to know when to stop doing some optional maintenance that is going to turn out to be more of a problem than it's worth. A while ago I had two equipment failures located in the same area and sharing the same wiring. One was the anchor washdown pump and the other was the Jabsco macerator pump. Since they both were fed from the same breaker and stopped working at the same time I thought it was too much of a coincidence that they both would fail at the same time. It was not. I worked on the Flojet washdown pump first and found it's problem was a faulty corroded pressure switch. Then a week ago I decided to finally take a look at the macerator pump issue. Since I thought at first it might be a power issue I decided to rewire the pump using Anderson Power Pole connectors. Using the30 amp connectors would make removing and testing the pump easier now and in the future. It would also help clean up some of the wiring. The macerator pump power was originally operated through a on/off /on switch that powered the washdown pump or the macerator pump depending on which position the switch was set:

So I wired two Powerpole connectors directly to the pump power wires:

I found some trouble shooting info on one of the sailing websites that some times the macerator pump is jammed. But, there is a cap on the back of the motor that could be removed and a screwdriver inserted onto the macerator pump motor shaft to turn it and clear the jam. Unfortunately, my twenty eight year old pump must have been one of the early ones and did not have the mentioned cap. So it looks like I will have to remove the pump to investigate further. In addition a ball valve on the output of the pump was jammed and would not budge. Since the input to the macerator pump also had a T that also connected to the holding tank output. Taking the pump out would now make the holding tank unable to be emptied by the usual means like a pump out:

So I decided that this project would be best done in the off season when I have more time to deal with working in the confined space where these components are located. My time is better spent now getting the boat ready for launching for the season. Sometimes you just have to know when to stop on some projects.