Hot March Pump

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aaronpetersen

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I've used my March pump several times now and it always gets quite hot around the area where the motor is when it's operating. It's hot enough that I can only put my hand on it for a second. Is that normal? It's clamped underneath my brew bench but the air vents aren't covered. I put some oil in the oil ports in case that was the problem but that doesn't seem to have helped. It still gets hot when I pump cold water through it so it's not heat conducting from the wort.
Should I be concerned (I already am obviously)? Is it faulty?
 
As long as its still pumping liquid you should be a ok.

My pump head got 'stuck' a while back due to some sugars from the grain sticking the head to the shaft - likely due to me not cleaning the rig straight after use.

Other than the above, my pump runs pretty warm too without issue.
 
Had my pump stop running on the weekend after a 1 hour mash with a HERMS and a probably a 40+ minute sparge

Thought I must have burned it out or some such and bucketed the rest of the wort into the kettle

Pulled the pump out and it was very hot. It started running again probably after 15-20mins

It's the slowest I'd run the sparge - as I was cutting the grass I wasn't fussed with time

I wouldn't say I was running it out the realm that most fly spargerers would

I'll see how it goes next batch - it's probably 5 years old or whenever that huge process pumps bulk buy was

Cheers
 
I had mine do a bit of stop start action and was quite warm to touch.
Turned out there was some grain husks in the impellor head , casuing a few isues...
It's been fine since , touch wood !
 
Try putting a pedestal fan over the motor. I have some pumps which get really hot (uncomfortably hot) because of a slightly bad design, but a small fan blowing over the casing brings the motor case surface temp from scortching hot to near room temperature. Might just need some air movement?
 

Sheesh here's something I did not know from the link above: "On these 809's for instance we will start to loose magnetism in the magnets around 250*F .....each time you overheat the magnets you will loose about 10% of the magnetic strength....do it enough times and you will ruin the magnets all together."

It seemed scarry until I converted it to metric = 120oC. Maybe it occurs to a lessor extent at 100oC?
 
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