dairy pumps

[rayi]

How hard is it to get parts for these pumps? How hard are they to rebuild and lastly are there instructions on the net to rebuild them

[tuckermtn]

Do you have a specific pump type or manufacturer in mind? Lots of different "dairy pumps" out there. Rotary vane, piston, etc...surge, delaval, Conde, etc...

[rayi]

Either the old Surge or Deleaval

[maple flats]

I've rebuilt 2 Surge Vane pumps. Easy to do and parts are available. Not familiar with DeLavel pumps.

[rayi]

Any instructions some where. I'm Mechanically Challenged

[tuckermtn]

surge piston pumps (SP-11, SP-22, BB-4) very reliable and simple, but parts are hard to come by. Pumps are also hard to come by in working condition. There is a Conde for sale in the classifieds. Parts still available for those.

[Wanabe1972]

I have rebuilt a deleval for my operation and they are very simple. It had off the shelf bearings and seals. Mine had good vanes so I did not replace them at the time but the are available. A buddy of mine has a farm and had a few of. These nonworking and we pulled them apart and found the vanes were stuck. We freed the up and they both ran well. I think the trick with these are plenty of oil flow and keep them cool.

[BreezyHill]

Rotarys are much easier to rebuild than piston pumps. I have a BB4,Surge that I need to open up and clean. The bb1 was easy but the cylinders are only about 2" the BB$ is about five" across. Delaval you just need to run a hone in them if they are rusty on the cylinder body. Otherwise the rust will eat at the vanes. wanabe is right...plenty of oil if you are going to run high vac...26"+. I don't use a relief sytem so the vac goes up really well. My system with ladders runs 27-29at the pump and the furthest tap after the three step ladders totaling around 47' of height runs at 21" during peak flow. That was a delaval 73. Next season will have a D 75 that I am rebuilding plumbed in for standy by with ability to isolate the 73 if a problem starts.
I attached a plastic fan to the pulley to flow air across the pump and building a oil reclaimer with a heat sink to cool the oil before reentering the pump. Feed the bearings and the vac line.
I put the way to open the case on a d 75 in another thread...if you cant find it let me know I can post pics. They are very straight forward but don't forget the vanes were made of asbestos back in the day so oil them with WD40 before you pull them apart. The oil keeps them from sheading any material.

[Wanabe1972]

Breezyhill. Do you have plans for your reclaimer I would like to build one myself. Also what size motor do you run on the 73? I have a 73 on 3/4 hp and it gets grumpy above 20 inches at the pump.

[BreezyHill]

Not yet on the plans...stuck in my head right now. The motor on the 73 is a farm duty 1hp. I will replace it with a 1.5 as it doesn't always like to start good. It is a capacitor issue. It calls for a 2 at 1000 rpm on the tag. I am still working on the reclaimer design as I say some new tech on dairy pipeline chiller for milk and it is very much like an EGR cooler for a F350 6.0. I really like the idea of aluminum to dissipate the heat faster than SS. Learn a lot by checking out how customers dairy reclaimers work or fail. The trick is that we have less air flow than dairy farms as we have higher vac so there is less air to move...after vac is achieved that is. When we are pumping down the lines the pump is cool so less vapor is produced so the oil will be cooler. I will put pen to paper this weekend at a soccer tournament and get you some design thoughts.