reclaimer piping

[Brokermike]

Perhaps I'm going crazy.

I have an old Universal Massport M2 Rotary vane pump. It has an inlet and an exhaust outlet, on top there is what I can assume is an oiler. It is a vertical tube with a reservoir that surrounds it, it essentially looks like an overflow pipe on a farm pond. I was originally just going to have my reclaimer drip into the grease fitting for the main bearing and the oiler for the vanes. Now all of a sudden the oil reclaimer on top seems to be under vacuum???

Does anyone know if simply feeding oil to the main bearing would be sufficient? The previous owner simply had a zerk fitting for the main bearing and it seems to work well with just that but I'm willing to try anything.

Also does anyone have any idea how or why my oiler would now seem to be under vacuum? It wasn't before, and the vertical tube seemed to have some sort of cap on it that must have been important. The cap is gone (I assume it got sucked into the pump??) I pulled the case apart on the pump and checked for debris but did not find anything. Any thoughts?

[Dennis H.]

If there is an oiler on the inlet side of the pump it will be under vac when the pump is running.

Yes you can have oil going into the bearings but 1st you may have to take the bearings out and clean the grease out so that the oil has a free means to oil the bearings and to get into the pump. If the bearings have a seal on the vac side it may have to be removed for oil to get sucked into the pump.
I had to do this on my Surge Alamo.

As to parts getting sucked in, as this is a vane pump it could very easily got sucked in and spit right back out the outlet without doing any damage, unlike a piton type vac pump.

The way I have my Surge alamo plumbed up is that I have oil going to both bearings and another line going to the inlet where the oiler use to be. I have needle valves for each line to regulate the amount of oil going to each one.

If you have any pics that would be helpful.

[Brokermike]

For perspective this is what I have right now. The reclaimer is a 5 gallon syrup can stuffed full of steel wool that will drip into a pail that sits under the vac pump. It is no attached in any of these pictures, I guess what I need help with is the oiler, not really the reclaimer.

[Brokermike]

This is the PVC oil tank that was on it when I bought it.

The second picture is the steel tube that extends up from the pump, this is shorter than the height of the actual PVC chamber, similar to an outlet pipe in a farm pond (under the height of the bank, but still maintains level). The problem is that under vacumm the pump just sucks the oil out of the PVC chamber until it is empty

The third picture is the PVC sitting on the pump next to the steel tube that extends from the pump to show the height difference.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Mike alot of the pumps had drip oilers on them. My Massport had a diaphfram puls oiler on the intak side just like yours. As the pump turned the pulsation made the diaphram pump oil allowing oil to get sucked into the drum. On my DeLaval the oil that was sucked into the bearings then traveled out to the drum and spun into the vanes. You could meter the oil into the bearings and the intake port at the top. If you start out with enough oil to have a tank that feeds the pump and reclaimer that collects and returns the oil to the tank. Then the oil lines from the tank would have needle valves to meter the oil to the bearings and intake to regulate how mush each gets.

[Brokermike]

So the needle valve would essentially limit the amount of oil that the pump could suck in?

I'm new at this whole thing but in my experience vacuum will travel along the point of least resistance. So I would need to tighten the needle valve on the oil line feed down so that even under maximum vacuum of say 18" it is only allowing in a small amount of oil, and it isn't creating a defacto vacuum leak? Otherwise wouldn't the pump just suck in all of the oil assuming that the lines to the releaser were really tight?

I also would think that my reclaimer would be filling the tank that the intake oiler is drawing from, which in a perfect world would maintain roughly the same level at all times (except what is lost through oil mist).

[Haynes Forest Products]

Yes it will create a small vacuum leak Avery nice oil vacuum leak. One that will help cool the pump and let you forgo the big vacuum leak..........The vacuum regulator:)