From the reviews, it appears this pump has a defective design such that the power cord easily breaks right at the pump. At least that's what happened to mine. Otherwise the pump has worked great. Well I assume the broken power cord is how they get repeat sales.
Anyway, I wondered if anyone has ever taken one of these apart and fixed the power cord, or you think it could be done.
I appears from this pic that a special tool would be needed to remove the cord housing, but I don't know if that means you could actually repair it.
I'm glad you posted this picture. I have a 250 watt (is that 1/3 HP) pump like yours and it lacks a strain relief, like yours did. I'll fashion one for the pump.
As for the broken cord, if it's above/outside the pump housing, you might be able to repair it using a watertight skin/shrink wrap and water-proof electrical tape. I've seen kits in hardware stores that repair underwater electrical wire. just a suggestion to investigate.
I wonder if you take your's apart if oil will come out or not?
I would clean it carefully, with naptha, and s damp rag. Then once it was thoroughly dry, I would hot glue pushed down inside the housing all around the cord for at least one inch outside the housing. I have done this a couple of times, the hot glue really sticks, and doesn't move unless it gets very hot. Just did it this past weekend on the cord ferom my electric chain saw where the cord wore thru the strain relief and was in danger of pulling out of the saw.
Thanks very much for the responses. I've made significant progress.
I've cut away a lot of the rubber fitting that housed the cord connection, so now I will be able to solder, or maybe splice with some kind of clamp, the broken wire back to the cord. Here are the before and after pics showing what I cut away, and what I have to work with:
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It appeared the other two wires weren't far from breaking too, so I just cut off the whole thing and will reattach all three wires.
So the issue at this point is - once I get the power cord soldered and reattached - what do I use to re-seal everything - it is after all a submersible pump. All the black stuff in the picture is rubber-like material. The inner core is soft, and the outer part is harder - like a hard rubber washer. I don't think something like epoxy would work because I don't think it would adhere.
Whatever I use has to adhere to (preferably) the outer hard-rubber part of the fitting, and to the outer insulation of the cord, which is also black rubber (I think - it doesn't look like plastic, but not sure). Of course when I say "rubber" I assume it's synthetic stuff - neoprene or whatever.
Once I get everything reattached, I'm going to wrap the cord around the pump handle about five turns, so the cord will never move again at all in this area. So the sealant can cure flexible or hard.
Actually, thinking about it, I could possibly seal just around the solder connection of each individual wire and just let the water go whereever else it wants to. Those wires just have normal insulation on them, so I would need a sealant that would adhere to that to keep water away from the bare wire.
Any suggestions for how to proceed at this point would be appreciated.
I'd probably attach a clamp to the handle and a cord handler that holds the cord firmly at that point I think (w/o a picture of the handle geometry, anyway). Whatever I did to hold it, it would _NOT_ wrap the cord around something multiple times; it would be to support it and prevent abrasion.
My impression looking at the picture is that it appears the insulation cracked from brittleness which makes me wonder how hot this thing runs/ran even though I don't see definite indications of overheating. How old is it?
As for the repair, I'd start w/ a good splice, follow up w/ heatshrink and then either a purchased-to-fit (most Ace hardwares have a selection) strain relief like from a small handheld appliance and pot it w/ silicone. I'd consider holding it w/ a small homemade fabricated clamp fastened to the case either by JB Weld or similar or drill/tap a very small couple of machine screws.
P&M becuase it's so long, but you should make it easier to figure out what your email address is. Do the numbers between, or the ones after, No and spam get removed or not? Or put instructions in your sig.
Possibly, the best thing to use would be silicon tape. It's hard to find, and not everyone calls it that. It looks like black vinyl electric tape, but has a vinyl backing strip and a white plastic inner spool, instead of the paper one on electric tape.
It's expensive, 7 or 9 dollars a roll, but well worth it for the places it is especially suited. It performs like heat-shrink tubing, but it isn't a tube, so it doesn't have to be slipped on, and if there is something big on the end, like a plug or a pump, that's not a problem. And it might be waterproof, when I don't think heat-shrink would be.
Just yesterday I used it for the first time to wrap around a hole in my garden hose. I used 5 inches of it, but 3 or 4 would have been enough if I'd planned a little better. I'm not going to run the water for 2 or 3 days, because though it goes on like tape, it eventually turns into one blob, where you can't see the previous edges of the tape.
You unroll 2 or 3 inches, get the start of the backing off (which is difficutl. Maybe a knife blade would pry up the backing, instead of my using my fingernail.) Then you hold the end in place while you stretch the tape to about 3 or almost 3 times its original length and wrap it around what ever you are taping. If you stretch it more than
3 times, it will break (You can tell when it has reached its limit of stretching. Using the same amount of effort, it won't stretch any more.) , but at 2 to 3 times, it pulls back after it is stretched, and in doing so grabs onto the overlapping layers of tape and usually whatever is being taped. I don't know if it will stick well to my reinforced vinyl garden hose, but it might. I know it was the perfect thing to use when a workman cut my phone wires, and I solderied them, and taped them, and had to bury them. The phone company said it was better than what they woudl have done. (Well maybe that was the solder, since they use gel-filled crimp connectors.)
Well, if it only "might" be waterproof, that's not much consolation if it isn't, is it? :)
How waterproof it is will depend entirely on how well the wrap is done. Certainly it or plain ol' black electricians' tape can make a waterproof seal that will last almost indefinitely (I've uncovered splices Dad did in the 50s that have been buried since that are still as good as new in doing other work).
The point of the heat shrink wasn't so much for the waterproofing (altho if use proper size to begin with and it is shrunk properly it will certainly do the job) but to provide the electrical insulation on the two conductors over the splice in a neat, non-bulky fashion. The recommended waterproofing was to 'pot' the region w/ a strain relief as well.
There's nothing wrong w/ the tape solution particularly, just I'd still go w/ the heat shrink first because it's so much easier to get a neat job when the two conductors are in close proximity as these are--it's more difficult to wrap tape around them independently than to place the tubing on first then slide it over the splice area after soldering is done.
I wanted to report that I have successfully completed the repair of the pump. I ended up soldering the splices instead of using butt connectors. My 30-watt iron worked fine. I used shrink tubing just to prevent shorting, not really for waterproofing, which I wouldn't want to depend on anyway.
Then I wrapped the cord around the pump handle three turns, and secured it in place with some 14-gauge solid wire so the cord isn't going to move at all from here on out. Then I just encased the whole splice area with silicone. Here are the pics:
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I think this should work well. I may need to attend to the silicone from time to time depending on how well it holds up. But the main thing is the immobilization of the cord. If I had a new pump, I would use the same or a similar method, and then the pump would probably last 25 years instead of 5.
I suspect that Little Giant knows that most of the failures of this model result from the power cord design (the Amazon reviews indicate that), and it's unfortunate that they don't choose to fix the design. But I guess they would lose sales if they did that.
I've been picking up this model pump by the handle for about
20 years, and it never even really gets warm. Remember that the pump operates mostly in the winter, submerged, and the water is pretty cold. If it continues to run when dry, the body will get pretty warm, but not the handle.
So I think I'll stick with this fix. If it fails near the handle, it's easily repairable there.
It ain't the handle I'm thinking of, it's how much heat does the cord dissipate?
The break you showed looked like a brittle insulation crack to me from the picture; I'm concerned when you wrap that cord around and put the loops all together it's just going to exacerbate the problem you already had.
If it broke once't...
Just use a hose clamp s/ a piece of rubber or somesuch over the cord to prevent chafing and provide the strain relief; eliminate the loops and my guess is then it would last indefinitely.
I used the solution that Peabody shared. I soldered the the wires together and covered with shrink tubing.
@dpb I noticed the insulation and jacket of the cable was very hard and brittle which probably was the cause of it cracking and exposing the conductors. The thermal cycling is the main cause but I was wondering if the oil which seeps into the cable contributes.
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