2015 G25 All 3 Ballast Pumps Failed

[Jasonvv]

Seeking advice on whether there is a deeper issue to explore.

My PORT ballast motor started to fall about a month ago. I reset the circuit, and it eventually stopped working altogether. The boat is 10 years old, so I bought a new pump and it works great. I took the old pump apart, and it looked a little rusty; the resistor/capacitor was a little fried, and a wire was unattached. A couple of weeks later, my Belly Pump started throwing errors. I bought a new pump, and it works great. I took the old Belly motor apart, and the electronics look fine, so I figure it's a coincidence and maybe the motor is worn out. Yesterday, (a week after I replaced my BELLY pump), my STARBOARD pump started throwing circuit errors. Now I am concerned! Any advice? The new pumps all seem happy, but if I ignore deeper issues, I'd hate to start replacing new pumps...

[jpwhit]

The pump manufactures strongly recommend the pumps be mounted vertically with the motor above the pump impeller housing such that water seeping past the seals does not enter the motor. But that's an inconvenient mounting orientation for being able to change impellers. Typically means you have to remove the pumps to change the impellers. So, boat manufacturers generally ignore that guidance from the pump manufacturers. If you change your pump mounting orientation to the recommended orientation, the pumps will last much longer.

But you may decide you'd rather replace pumps more often than increasing the effort it takes to swap the impellers. And if you pay the dealer or someone else to change your impellers, they may charge you a good bit more if it ends up being a lot more labor to do the job.

It's not surprising that all your pumps failed at the same time. They all run about the same amount of time each time you fill and empty the ballast. And the seals wear pretty proportional to runtime and age assuming everything is perfect when the pumps are made. I'd say you actually had a very good set of pumps if they all lasted a 10 year life. It's pretty common to have at least one pump fail much earlier. If I have a pump fail, and it's been around the normal life of a pump, I replace all the pumps at that point just because it's disruptive to have each pump failure ruin another outing on the boat.

I do the same thing for surf tab actuators as well. Because they have similar lifetimes based on water intrusion based on age and runtime due to seal wear.

[bturner]

Had 2 of the 3 pumps go out the same month on my 07 MC X2 years ago, pumps were mounted pump head over the motor. Both had the seal go bad and the water leak into the motor causing the failure. I replaced all 3 pumps, changed the mounting and reversed the pump head to account for the reposition and never had a problem after. I also tried to find just the seals to do maintenance but was never able to find them.