7.4 Electric fuel pump conversion, but gearbox is still going to leak....

[JPLKY]

Hi all, first post, but been lurking for a while since we bought our '94 Mariah Z235 last year.

I'm tired of fooling with the combination fuel/sea water pump set up. Just rebuilt the gearbox, replaced the mechanical fuel pump and the gearbox is already seeping a little oil again. Seems converting these to electric is a pretty common fix.

My question is what to do about the seeping gearbox? I assume it still needs oil for the bearings on the shaft that's still driving the sea water pump, or is it ok to not since it isn't driving the arm on the fuel pump anymore?

Thanks in advance.

 

[alldodge]

Just rebuilt the gearbox

Howdy

Sounds like you either didn't rebuild it correctly or a seal/shaft is damaged. There pretty simple housings, but care does need to be taken when rebuilding. The gear lube should be checked every couple years to make sure gas is not leaking into them, this is what causes them to fail. The newer housings did not have a pump and used grease inside instead of lube.

You can use grease instead of lube, but need to get the grease into the bearings and to do this you need to disassemble the pump and get the lube out. In either case from info provided, your going to need to disassemble again to fix the seal

 

[JPLKY]

Thank you for the insight. I didn't think about using grease. I sell equipment for a living and when we get a gearbox on a bush hog that has a very very slight leak we use something called 00 grease. If I convert to electric, that just might work to prevent future issues. The more I've read today, the more I'm starting to think I should just stick with the manual pump though. Decisions, decisions!