Discouraged and down

[BreezyHill]

The rapping sound is most generally a vein that is damaged and only slides part way out and the rap is the vein slamming the housing at the pint that the vein is able to protrude out of the rotor to. This is very easy to detect in the housing by a wavy at a point in the housing. Usually you will find 2 or as many as four of these waves at different points on the housing since generally all veins don't have the same point of damage.

Last night the issue with the 73 was discovered tobe the rotor is spinning on the shaft. Relatively easy weld job and possible will need to dress the housing.

We never got our guzzler to work a ladder we tried to replace the ladder but found it was to much work bringing pump back and forth everyday so it would not freeze.

Isolation valves are the best answer to eliminate sections and locate the issue point. I need to install a lot more valves...it cost me a lot last season as I could not find a drop that detached on the back side of a tree over the brook bank. I would have capped the saddle had I known where the leak was. To much snow to safely check without a rope holder.

Just think after all your troubles you will be a master faultfinder. LOL

When at the bottom up is the only route available.

Good Luck Guys!

Ben

[wildlifewarrior]

Thanks everyone. Good news we welded our rotor to the shaft (it was spinning freely). Everything went back together great and we were back up and running.

HUGE thanks to Ben for his help walking us through our delaval trouble. he really knows his stuff!!!

THANKS BEN!!

Mike

[BreezyHill]

Welcome Mike!

Glad it was a quick repair.

Ben

[BAP]

Glad you were able to get it going again with a relatively easy fix. The shaft to drum connection is one of the weak links in the DeLaval vacuum pumps. They used a press fit to hold them in place and over time the shafts can spin in the drum.

[VT_K9]

Glad to hear you are back up and running. You'll still want to check for leaks as to why your guzzler was not performing well. It will help increase the sap yield for the vacuum.

We had a guzzler (sap puller) for two years. I found when everything was tight we could get 23-25" vacuum. However this is not vacuum with any CFM to back it up...hence why the ladders don't work well or at all. I found with 2-3 broken taps 2 two squirrel chews I was down to about 12" vac. on the puller. Have you checked the membrane on the guzzler. Ours would fail to hold vac. if it had cracks. Remove the shield and watch it move and you'll see some cracks where it folds. We ran our guzzler with about 1500' of 1" mainline and for about 300 taps. It worked great. We stepped up to a full vacuum system last year and it was that much better with the CFMs.

Good luck,

Mike