I took it to a place in my village this morning that does a lot of agricultural repair but before I'd even finished saying 'water pump' the man was shaking his head. He told me he'd rebuilt loads over the years in combines and tractors and if they didn't break during the rebuild they almost always still leaked afterwards. He told me to buy a new one.
When I got home I couldn't just give up. I don't like throwing away original parts, but there's also something inside me that mourns the passing of our ability to fix things. The people still restoring traction engines today can't just buy new parts. If they need something fixed or replaced they have to machine it.
So I made a start myself, with the plan that once it was apart I could freeze the casting and the new spindle/bearing assembly overnight, which would hopefully make it possible to get back together without a press if I worked quickly enough.
To cut a long story short, the casting broke in the process. I think I can sleep at night fairly certain it would have broken anyway even if a press had been used - you've got to put force on the casting at some point in the process, whether with a press or through the shock of drifting the spindle out.
I started by trying to drift the spindle out from above. No chance!
I noticed I'd got the whole impeller/spindle/flange assembly to move through the casting though, so next I tried to pull the flange off the spindle, trying to keep the casting out of the equation as I'd been told it was the weak point. There's hardly any lip on the underside of the flange so the puller kept jumping off. No joy.
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So I tried a bigger puller, this time trying to pull the casting and flange back (up) off the front end of the spindle..
..and the casting broke. Sad, but it does mean now I can just buy a new water pump. And I don't have to worry about not having tried.
