Home-made Hydraulic Ram Pump

lots lots aware of that two new check valves and then a stop for the gauge so those of you that are new to the channel what you're looking at is a ram pump a ram pump is something a little pump that you can build yourself for less than $200 that pumps water without using any electricity or any gasoline engines or anything like that and I've noticed over the the last couple days that it's it's not pumping as much as it usually has so something's wrong one of the valves or something is worn so I'm going to take this out of here and we'll dig into it see what it is see if we can figure out what it is it's causing it one thing that I did wrong when I built this is this valve a shutoff valve this is the supply line here from the water source is on the wrong side so every time I want to take it out and service it I got water all over my face so let's take this valve here move it to the other side of the union a union is two pieces that connect together so you can separate it and then we can shut it off and then take the Union loose and work on it without getting all wet now with the valve installed on the other side of the Union we have a much better system here okay should have done that in the first time so here's the pump in its entirety and I don't know what's going on since there's only two moving parts on it there's two swing check valves here and here let's pull those apart and see maybe those have become damaged and I've got some replacements so we'll break it down and see what see if we can go see what's going on there maybe pinecone or who knows something's stuck in there I've seen that before too so let's tear into it and see what we come up with so as I said earlier there's only two moving parts and the moving parts are what they call a swing check valve and you can see right here the only thing all it is is just a valve that allows water to go one way opens and closes here I have the old one and here I have a brand new one and I can see I think the potential problem right here is that this grandpa's been running continuous now I'd say almost a year and if you see this here this flapper needs to seat up against this now there's so much wear in this it's become so loose from use you can see that even if this is pushed to the extreme side let me get my flashlight you can see that there's a you see light through it that should be sealed I don't know if that is contributing to the decline I kind of doubt it because it happened so quickly and this took a long time for this to wear but I'm certainly I'm sure it contributes but you can see here you know look right in there see that pin that pin of course is going to wear back and forth and it looks like it may be even have excuse me slipped out of its seat so I've wondered how long we could expect to ramp up to run without like this without receiving some maintenance and I'm I'm guessing about a about a year obviously these are really wore if we look at the new one here you can see that it's very tight there's a very little movement back and forth or the old one here you can see see all that movement so I'm going to switch these out or replace them it looks like that pin can be replaced here so what we'll also pull this out take a look at it see if there's any way to rebuild these things maybe by pushing a little bit larger pin in one more improvement I'm going to do before I install the RAM pump that I didn't do initially was on the pressure gauge you can see right here it's nice to have the pressure gauge kind of see what's going on but the problem I had this is that I didn't put a shutoff valve with the hammering of this ram pump constantly eventually it's going to really be hard on this gauge even though it's a good quality liquid or oil filled gauge so what I'm going to do here is using some small adapters is just put in line a small shutoff valve so I can look at the gauge when I'm done with it I can shut this off and then put this gauge so it's not working all the time and just getting pounded so one thing I will share with you that is new to the shop is my grandfather was a mechanic his entire life and he has saved being from the man who lived through the depression he saved everything and he always kept all of his this right here for example is just one of the drawers from the cabinet that I just he just gave me for my birthday of all types of just little brass fittings and everything's really nicely organized and just by having this is so useful to me because it just saves a trip to the hardware store and then I can usually go through here and find something that makes it work so I'll take you over and show you the cabinet real quick and some of the cool stuff that I found inside so here's granddad's old parts bin cabinet I remember when I went to pick this up for my birthday a few weeks ago I just I've forgotten how small it was I thought it you know it's probably four feet tall or so but I just remember being a little kid digging through here and it seems so big to me as funny but it's just so so nice I've got to just a lifetime's worth of just a collection of washers for example here and and wood screws and fasteners and here we've got to cotter pins it just goes on and on a whole drawer full of little Springs you know what how about a homestead something like this here's some small machine bolts and larger bolts what what a treasure that is if you have someone in your family who has collected these things or has fasteners or nuts and bolts a lot of people might think that they don't have any value and just throw them away these things are worth their weight in gold if you're a homesteader or a farmer and if you come across some bolt boxes or things at garage sales boy snatch them up because they will they will really really make your life a lot easier and it makes you you can come up with some pretty creative options for lots of different things thanks granddad look at this little solid brass stop how old you think that is wouldn't surprise me if that came over from Oklahoma with him before the world before the war so there it is the newly rebuilt and improved ram pump two new check valves and then a stop for the gauge which I should have done let's set break one of these open these little guys and see if these can't be rebuilt yeah I would say yes if we can see right here look inside there you can see that there is a right there is a little tab that this rides on and this thing is it's working back and forth click click when you hear the click and the RAM pump is wearing on here I can see on these bushings that they are if you look real closely they're completely stepped down where this flapper valve has been running on that so this here this holes you can see are all old worn and old and there's a lot of play on this thing I'm not going to do this but I could do this in a pinch if I needed to - this is brass braze that in there Reed drill that with the drill press get an oversize brass pin or or find something might even be yeah might be able to reuse it I mean you you could make it work you could make it work that's for sure much better system here with this valve on the other side of the Union used to when I did this I used to have water spraying all over my face and and lesson learned there is a sequence that you need to follow when you're starting your RAM pump we got this valve shut off and we got this valve here shut off since I unhooked it move the valve this water's drain but the vet let the ram pump needs back pressure it needs that pressure coming down the hill to make it work right here so we'll close this valve until we can slowly pump enough water to get back pressure for the for it to work properly and we use the gauge but the gauge to show us what that will be so we'll go ahead and turn on the main valve this is coming from the water supply alright so what I do is you see the check valve is closed there just go ahead and push it down and where's going to be some air in it you got to get the air out of it and I'll do this for a few seconds I could just tell by the sound of it just the tolerance of this valve is so much tighter and that I think that it was just degrading over time the more and more we're got on that valve we can see here please miss T our pressure will start building here and once we're up to about 20 psi we can slowly start opening that valve and then when it drops down to 10 closing it and just keep fussing with it until it will hold about a good 10 15 psi then we can turn it loose and it will that's it there's nothing else it needs to be done it sounds much better I can just tell by the sound of it that it's working more efficiently

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 668,981

Keywords: ram pumps, hydro ram pumps, hydrauic ram pump, water ram pump, hydrolic ram pump, hydraulic ram, ram pump plans, water ram pump plans, ram water pump, ram pump design, building a ram pump, hydraulic water ram pump, how to build a ram pump, well pump, how to make a ram pump, hydrolic pump, solar pump, clemson hydraulic ram pump, off-grid pump, wraglerstar, diy ram pump, engineer775

Id: xlkuZjd2Frc

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2013