How to Fix a Pressure Washer (Part 1 of 2)

hi this is mark from ereplacementparts.com we just have this pressure washer to pin to our shop the customers complaining that it has low pressure and we're going to go ahead and take a look at it see if you know what's wrong and show you how to fix it the pressure washer were working on today is a Karcher model k 2400 a cake it has a Honda engine the first thing we need to do to begin diagnosing is to simply run the pressure washer I'm going to turn it on see what it is doing there there are several instances of low pressure that can occur they that kind of different one might be it has absolutely no pressure at all when I when I operate the handle or it may have pressure that slowly fluctuates up and then down and then up or it may pulse very very quickly and those three things can mean three different things so we'll just start it up and see what's going on what we saw there was initially ahead really good pressure and then when I released the trigger on the wand and pulled it again that pressure went away totally where we had absolutely no pressure that would tell me probably a problem with the bypass valve or what's called the unloader valve I think it's probably stuck and maybe just need some lubrication so we'll take aim take it inside take it apart and see what we find so here we are in the shop I need to start by removing the pump from the engine on the pressure washer now I've removed those four screws to hold the pump to the motor the next thing I need to do is remove this hose this is the soap or detergent delivery hose found the easiest way to do this because it is held in place by a little Barb is to get simply cut it off you have plenty of hose here you're only going to lose about a half in for that hose so no reason to not just cut that and we'll put that back on later now I can pull the pump off the pump is on a keyed shaft I just simply pull it straight off of the machine sometimes that shaft will get very rusty and corroded and you'll have kind of a hard time pulling it off you may need a couple pullers behind it to actually pry it off but in this case I think this one's it's gonna slide right off very easily just like that now we can take it over to the bank and continue on with the repair now we'll begin tearing down the pump like I said before I suspect the problem is probably with the unloader valve which is located right under here we're gonna get to that more in a second whenever I tear into one of these pumps though there are so many variables that can go wrong I like to tear through the whole pump inspect each component do any cleaning that I need to do and then go ahead and reassemble so we're gonna start by separating the three halves of the pump here the front piece this middle piece and the rear from each other and I will do that by removing these four bolts now there's an oil reservoir in here so I have to be careful keep in mind right all these bolts out we're gonna start to get oil flowing out of that pump so what I'm going to do first is just loosen them then we'll set an upright to actually take them out to loosen these I think we're it's best to just pick a wrench on there in this case it's a 13 millimeter wrench and give the rank of tap with a dead bull mallet I guess makes the disassembly go a little bit easier so we'll do that to all four of these bolts first okay with the bolts broken free now I go ahead and remove them I like to start with two of the bolts diagonally from each other the reason for that is there are springs underneath this assembly and as it starts to come apart those Springs are going to push the housing away from each other so it's just easiest to remove two of these bolts completely and then we'll slowly back these two off a little at a time as the springs push the housings apart when we get just about to the end of the threads on those bolts and kind of push the housing down and remove the bolt or the yeah the bolt with your fingers set this aside now I'm gonna drain the oil out of this housing we'll replace that oil during a reassembly when I grain the oil probably barely see it there that's our a wobble plate and if I just dump this way while all of that assembly will fall out we don't need to remove that so I'm just with my finger gonna hold that in place and dump the oil out of the pump okay these two pieces of the housing will simply pull apart just like that and that gives us access to three of the six valves right here you can see these vowels are quite dirty I mention there's a little water in the oil that probably means that some oil has also been getting into the water in our pump and that's gonna be remnants of that old oil so when we go to put it back together we'll clean all that up okay the part I'm going to worry about now is that unloader valve which is underneath this piece to get in there I need to pop this cap off the screwdriver just like that remove this little shield and now we have this plastic housing it's held in place with two bolts that have a Torx number 30 head on them go ahead and as I pull this white plastic piece off I want to be a little careful there is a spring underneath it just want to make sure we don't lose that right there set that aside the unloader itself is down in this hole and it could be a little challenging to remove the easiest way to do it is with a nice long pair of needle nose pliers there's a little stem down there you can grab that stem hold it very very tightly kind of spin the valve and pull it out sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get it to come free that valve is held in with some Owings may be a little tricky sometimes to get it to pull out there we go okay now we can inspect the valve see a lot of corrosion on it it also looks to me like the inner shaft there maybe bend a little bit and that very likely could be the the problem here seems to be a wear item on the Karcher pressure washers we see a lot of these where they're either broken right in half or bent like this one is so it really seems to be a wear item that requires you know fairly frequent maintenance so I'm not surprised to see this like I said what this valve does is it moves up and down inside the pressure washer like that and after a while that inner shaft just where so I could say I think that's that's our problem and that's where all proceed with this repair with the Val Val I can go ahead and do a little more disassembly because I want to clean the pump you can see there's quite a bit of dirt and oil inside the pump we want to get rid of that so basically I just need to remove pretty much anything made out of rubber or plastic and I'll start with these little keepers that go over the seals there's a little plastic spacer inside of there I'll pull that out I've got three of these to remove they come out very easily okay now these pieces left inside the housing here are actually the bottom or the seat that the valves go on now let's pull those out with a pair of needle nose pliers just like that okay I've removed everything I need to remove from this side of the pump I'm gonna go ahead and set that aside and we'll start on this side over here I've got one valve still in there from when we initially took it apart I'll just dump that out like that that aside I've got these rubber seals that seal against the Pistons I'll just pull those out now now up top here underneath this plate there's three more vowels I'll go to remove that plate now so we can get into those just like that the next three valves are located underneath these little plugs I need to get those out next okay so I've got the vowels all out of it last thing I'm going to do to this piece before I clean is remove that little piece of tubing that we cut off earlier and I'll just simply take a utility knife the good sharp blade cut a line through that take my needlenose again and pull that right off just like that okay at that point the pump is ready to clean we're gonna have to order a few parts so I'm have to wait for those to come in when we get those we'll show you how to reassemble it

Channel: FIX Tech Guides

Views: 1,086,774

Keywords: diagnose a pressure washer, clean a pressure washer pump, replace unloader valve, pressure washer repair, low pressure fix

Id: Qmrhgq22ASI

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2010