vacuum pump blues

[jimsudz]

went out to shut my surge alamo( 30 or 40 not sure) down this eve, temp around 33. sounded a little stiffled. checked vac gauge only around 13"s walked to pump and noticed exhaust was spitting out milky oil. Oh ship! shut her down and the equalizer tank was full of sap, along with the oil reservoir/reclaimer. All I can figure is we had a quick 2" blast of snow and the releaser frooze up .I loosened up the side cover and the reclaimer to drain over night. I'll refill tomorrow and try it out. was about 3 hrs since i checked and it was running fine. apparently the equalizer is not any sort of a moisture trap. any Ideas or helpful tips

[jetdoc]

Ran into the same problem this year. You need to put in a moisture trap.

[BreezyHill]

I have to run but will draw up my moisture trap design that is auto on off of pump and restart.

No the balance tank is not a moisture trap...second line of defence but not moisture trap. I have to finish rebuilding my pump that was running to cool and condensated a small amount of water...one of the sons top off the oil reservoir or some non vac oil residue must have been in the reclaimer and made oil booggers and plugged the dripper and the main oil line to the pump and she seized.

[Sunny Hill Farm]

Jim,

Sorry to here of the Vacuum Pump Blues.....We have the same pump sitting of to the side and some spare parts if you get into anything major. Still working in Alden if you need anything. Hope you get it back going for the next couple days.....

[jimsudz]

After draining all the contaminated oil,I refilled with fresh vacuum oil and I'm up and running.Releaser was full of ice in the air chamber, so I thawed it out and everything seems to be functioning as it should.Vacuum started out at 15-16"after a few hrs of running its gone up to 17.5-18". I usually can get 19-20" out of it, hopefully it will go up. I did find a moisture trap that came with another alamo,but it didn't look vacuum friendly. I'll check it out over the weekend and see if it will work.