Stuart water pump

A mate of mine has asked me to sort this pump out hopefully to get it in good working order, I have never done anything with a Stuart water pump before,  worked on Lister Domestic in the past , but this is different in some ways, so ideas please as to  how to get rid of the amount of rust in the chamber, as there is a lot.

I have removed the piston chamber cyl. head if that is how you would term it and all seems ok in there and it all turns very smoothly,  the 2 springs in chamber are 2 different shape and sizes, one is conical other just normal shape for a spring so do not know which is correct shape as both fit where the should.
Next questions about gaskets, can they be bought, if so where from, the pieces I have managed to remove just seem very thin paper I. E.  a cornflakes box  type card none are complete.

Thanks for any ideas people, Don

Don

The four springs are stainless steel and conical in shape. When I restored mine I was lucky to find the gaskets were in 'not to bad' condition and I was able to use them as a template for some home-made ones. When I removed the piston I found it had 'O' ring seals and not leather cup washers as I presumed thus making it easy to find replacements.

I would not worry too much about the rust, just clean off the flaking stuff as best as you can with a rotary wire wheel. Just make sure you lap the brass valves and their seats for a good seal when pumping.

I had to replace the sight glass in mine as the one it came with was broken (it was probably glass when new but had been replaced with a thin piece of Perspex) I replaced mine with some Lexon as it is easier to cut and not so brittle.

You will also need some gland packing for the piston rod, I used some square section Graphite packing which works really well.

When I was doing mine I did extensive research into spares but was unable to find any in the UK

I've got an instruction booklet and a couple of sheets of parts for reference, PM me and I will send them to you.

I've included some photos of mine after strip-down and cleaning and one of the pump finished. Mine is a Stuart Boiler Feed pump, AF2 E12.

These are nice pumps that can be driven in either direction.

Martyn

When I removed the piston I found it had 'O' ring seals and not leather cup washers as I presumed thus making it easy to find replacements. wrote:

That is handy, my old one has cup washers which were a bit of a pain to replace.
My current one has a stuck valve but the studs are that long gone I can't separate the valve chest to get to the ones underneath, it's pumps ok so I'm just leaving it for fear of breaking it.

Don, Brick acid is supposed to work good on the rust, but not tried it myself.

StuartTurnerSteve wrote:

That is handy, my old one has cup washers which were a bit of a pain to replace.

The manual says that the Boiler Feed - High Pressure pumps (AF1, AF2 & AF4) had a brass piston and ground coned valves and were fitted with piston 'O' rings which are shown in the exploded parts diagram.

Yea the boiler feed pumps did, Mine was a standard pump.

I've never had one of these with a sight glass made out of actual real glass. They have all been some sort of thickish clear plastic, maybe something like celluloid originally ?? I replaced then with thick clear plastic bendable sheet like the sort used for overhead transparencies (remember them ?) but a bit thicker.