Villiers C12 powered pump

I picked this up yesterday.







A member on another forum posted some pictures of a workshop he was involved in clearing as the owners are downsizing, and I spotted a it lurking under a bench. As it was fairly local I decided to take a look. Searching 'Modern Pump and Engineering Co' shows up a company of that name still going but not much else. I'm guessing 70's, judging by the 'Telex' number? I was told it was a runner, the choke lever is broken and the air filter clips are missing but I have a spare carb. I may just give it a check over and clean it up.

I'm thinking of making this my next project, at the moment I don't have a suitable large container to pump water in/out of. I understand that running a centrifugal pump 'dry' is a no no, so do you think it would be OK to just run a pipe between the inlet and outlet just to give it a short test run?

I've been giving this a look over. Found that it had a spark but very weak, cleaning and setting the points improved it greatly. Air filter and adaptor are missing and choke lever broken as mentioned. The fuel tap plunger is missing and someone has pushed a cork into the tap to 'repair' it. I have the bits I need in the spares I kept from the Warsop pump.









When I drained the oil I found the sump contained some suspicious silver/grey sludge, and it feels and sounds like there is play in the big end so further investigation is needed.

Those pumps are cracking bits of kit, I have a slightly newer engine fixed to the same pump, There will be a rubber flap on the inlet I would just fill the pump with water and that would be good enough, I would even guess that these type of pumps dont need water in them, but if they have a carbon seal thats what get worn out quick like on the fire pumps,
I certainly give mine a quick run with out water just to keep the petrol moving through the carb every so often. for a longer run i would throw some water in it.
Chris

Thanks for that.

On further investigation I found the big end was fine, in fact the back of the shells are marked '0.020 U' so presumably that means undersize? I would still have had to take the sump off to clean it out though, I wish I had taken a photo of the sludge...

I've been continuing with this, gave it a good clean up and cleaned out the spare carb, swapped the plunger in the fuel tap, cleaned the cowling and cleaned out the fuel tank and other bits and bobs. Yesterday I put it all back together. I also got some fittings online to reduce the 2" BSP inlet/outlet on the pump to 1 1/2" hose tails so I can use the convolute hose that I've already got







Everything was going well until I decided it would be a good idea to make sure I could get the drain plug out of the pump body. Tried various wrenches, stilsons, heat, hammering a socket on it, tapping it round with a punch... I was worried I might break the alloy pump body so in the end I cut off the square and drilled it out in stages to 13mm so I could get a hacksaw blade in.









Just ordered a new plug, hopefully should have it pumping soon.

Good way to get the plug out, chances are you'd never get the original one out anyway, when you fit the new one use some copper slip or grease to 1. help seal it and 2 make sure it doesn't seize in again.
They are a nice set, I had a slightly bigger Mk25 one, was very nice and shifted a lot of water!

The new plug arrived yesterday so I was all set to get this up and pumping today... I had borrowed a big trug from work so I set everything up and put some petrol in the tank. There was leak from the fuel tap which I was expecting as the cork had dried out, it stopped after a few minutes when the corked had swelled. I pulled the engine over but it didn't feel right, it felt like it was kicking back and made no attempt to fire. I took the cover off the valve chest but the valves weren't sticking so I suspected the ignition timing was out. I took the tank, cowling and head off, on these later engines there are marks on the flywheel and backplate so you don't need to measure the distance before TDC of the piston like the earlier ones. It was a mile out, someone must have had the flywheel off in the past and not timed it when refitting it. I need to clean the head up and put it all back together now before I have another go...

Finally got this back together today, I had to wait for a head gasket from Meetens as they didn't have them in stock. Got it all set up with the hoses and trug, it started after a couple of pulls. It ran very fast and rich judging by the black smoke from the exhaust, it cleared when I weakened it a bit. I wasn't sure if the throttle lever was fitted correctly as it stopped the governor closing the throttle, so I removed it and adjusted the governor to get the speed (and volume of water) down to a much more acceptable level. The fuel tap still leaks so will need a new cork and the tank has been repaired with some sort of 'chemical metal' in the past and weeps when fitted, I think tightening the tank strap must open the repair up slightly. But overall I'm very happy that I've bought another old piece of tat back to life!

I've posted a video of it running in the video section.

I investigated the leak on the tank, wire brush revealed this:



I tapped the area in bit and applied some old Plastic Padding 'leak Fix' I had in the drawer.





I gave the tank a (very) quick paint job, I found a tin of cheap clear lacquer on the shelf that claimed to be petrol resistant but it spluttered to a stop clogged up after I'd done one end of the tank. I cut a piece of ali to spread the load of the strap when I refitted the tank. I fitted a new cork in the tap as well. Seems all good now after another test run.