Strangest Leak Ever

[sevisehda]

I haven't been around the forums in while partially cause of work and my system has gone almost maintenence free for 3-4months. The most I've done to it was vacuum off the filter once a week.

One day last week I noticed my water went from crystal clear to white. I thought that evaporation through the tubing had finally taken enough water that my pump was sucking in air. So I filled it up. The next day I thought I'd add a little more water to replace the air that had been removed. My 3/8" dimater "fill tube" connects to the inlet valve, when I opened the valve about 8 inches off water was literally sucked into the system. Quite odd since this would my entire system was under negative pressure. Every day its been the day story. I lose about 8 inches of 3/8" diameter tubing worth of water each day. My lines are flat not form bending from from a constant vacuum pressure inside my system. At first I didn't think it was a leak because if the system was under negative pressure it should be sucking air in not letting water out. I checked for leaks best I could. Well tonight I finally relaized that I have a leak on the bottom of my Johnson pump. Not exactly where but its close to its 10k hour life expectancy. I'll be replacing it quickly, course now that I'm fixing that I may as well upgrade the rest of the system.

[sevisehda]

I'm going to order my new pump within the next 24Hours. Right now I'm looking at a Mag-Drive Supreme 5 that would cost me $58.68. If anyone has any other suggestions or commenst please post. Thankyou.

[krazy]

Interesting leak. The pump must be sucking the pressure right out of the loop by the placement of the hole or something.

I would highly recommend a Mag 3 instead of the Mag 5. The 5 is slightly more powerful, but it puts out a lot more heat than the 3, so you're just better off with the model 3 unless you really have a need for serious pumping power, and then I think a different solution would be better.

I've been using a Mag3 for over a month now and it runs great for me.

[sevisehda]

Update:

Today was a fairly eventful day for my PC. The trusty guy in Brown delivered my pair of Mag3 pumps. A quick stop at a local auto parts store netted me a rather massive blower and I placed an order for a pair of rads at dangerden.com.

With about $4 worth of fittings and an hour after work I managed to slip a Mag3 in for the Johnson. While waiting for the JB weld and plumbers good to dry a quick dismantle of the Johnson yielded some interesting finds.

1) The first thing I noticed were some mineral deposits on the belly of the pump. Obvious signs I had a slow leak that was evaporating as fast as it leaked.
2) Black Powder, coated almost everything in the pump, then covered my hands and my desk.
3) The brushes were nearly gone. Just little stubs were left. I haven't taken the impeller of the shaft in order to check out the bearing.

I would of included pictures but my cheap "thanks for opening a bank account" digital camera died.

One thing I noticed about the mag3 is that it causes my monitor to flicker some. I hate to think of what its doing to everything inside the case. With luck by next Wednesday it along with the other Mag3, the blower and rads will all have a new home in a seperate watercooling box.

Results...Don't put too much weight into these simply because the etup is far from ideal. With the Johnson I has a res directly mounted to the intake, and a 3/4 inch hose running from the output to the radiator. With the mag3 as it is there are 4 fittings including a 90. Needless to say this is quite restrictive in comparison. So the numbers or at least number. My CPU temp has dropped 3C while the NB dropped 1C. I really need to find new thermal probes for my DD5.

[bigben2k]

Nice work. Is there any other way you could post a couple of pics of what you describe above?

Was this black powder inside the impeller housing?