Stock Plumbing Removal

My design will use two new Johnson Ultra ballast pumps for filling and emptying all ballast and will include a new manifold with ball valves for everything.  So the stock plumbing is no longer needed.   Essentially everything needs to come out except for the hard tanks and I'll reuse a small portion of the existing hose later on.

The first thing I did was to remove the stock ballast pumps and hoses leading up to the sprinkler valves.  This boat came with a single Jabsco water puppy located under the rear seat bench.  Begin by removing the hose from the fittings.  To do that you simply loosen the clamps and then I found it handy to heat up the hose with a heat gun to help get the stock hose off the barbs.  Just be sure to be careful with using the heat gun.  You don't want to direct too much heat around any electrical or other hoses in the boat.  Pay attention to what you are doing and you'll be fine.  Heat up the pipe slowly until it expands enough to come off.

Once you have the hoses removed, you can now remove the stock pump.  Make sure your battery is disconnected and clip the electrical wires to the pump.  Be sure to leave the original wire tails so that you can either sell or reuse the stock pump somewhere else.  The pump is screwed to the wall using 4 screws.  Remove those and you're done under the seat bench.  By the way, I found that working under the seat bench is much easier if you remove the seat hinge from the base.

Now you're ready to start removing the sprinkler valves and stock manifold.  These are located on the wall in the front of the engine compartment.  You basically just need to clip the wires, remove the mounting straps, loosen the hose clamps and you're good to go.  Be sure to keep the mounting straps used for the original manifold.  We'll use those later to mount our new manifold.   Sorry this is a horrible picture.


Next it is time to remove the stock aerator pumps and hoses used for draining the stock tanks.  You won't need those anymore since the new Johnson impeller pumps are reversible and will be used for both filling and emptying the tanks.  The stock tanks are accessed via access panels located in the rear lockers and under each seat bench.  Remove the panels and you'll see the fill and vent lines on the front of the tank and the empty pump on the rear of the tank.



The aerator pump is screwed directly to the hard tank and there is not enough room to spin it off.  In order to unscrew the pump you'll have to slide the hard tank into the rear locker far enough until you can lift up the end of the tank to unscrew the pump.  To do this, start by removing the fill and vent hoses from the front of the tank.  Also remove the hose going from the pump and clip the electrical wires.  The hose simply threads off of the pump.  Next, you'll need to detach the tank from the floor by removing the 8 screws used to secure the tank.  Leave the mounting brackets attached to the tank...just remove the screws threaded into the floor.  Once you've done that, the tank easily slides through the rear access panel and into the rear locker.  If you're like me and have antifreeze in the tank from winterizing then you'll need to be careful to not spill it once you remove the pump.  I used a fluid extractor to suck some of the antifreeze out of my tanks since the stock drain pump only sucks so much out....there's still a fair amount in the very bottom of the tank.  You'll need to keep the end of the tank raised up a bit while you do this so that the fluid doesn't come out where the pump used to be located.  Once you have the tank pulled into the rear locker then you'll have enough room to lift up the tank and unscrew the pump.

Before you push the tank back under the seat bench, now is a good time to thread a 3/4" barbed elbow onto the end of the tank.  This will be used for the new fill/empty line.  I wasn't confident that the threads on the hard tank were very precision so I used a little thread seal tape around the threads of the elbow.   Once you're done with that go ahead and push the tank back under the seats.  Here's a picture with the 3/4" elbow attached.  We'll attach the hose at a later time.


Next, remove the fill hose as it is no longer needed.  The stock fill hose runs from the sprinkler valve to the front of the hard tank.  Both ends are disconnected at this point so it is just a matter of fishing it out.  You'll find there are probably endless amounts of zip ties to cut while you're doing this.  Reattach the vent hose to the front of the tank.  Be sure to inspect the end of the stock hose as I found it becomes easily damaged when removing it from the barb.  Especially if you had to heat it up.  I luckily found this out when I noticed a small drip of antifreeze seeping through my drain line when I reattached it.  So just be aware.  I suggest just snipping a few inches off of any stock hose you have to reattach.  There's usually enough slack available.

Since the fill hose is no longer needed, you'll now need to plug the port going into the hard tank.  I originally planned on just unthreading the stock barbed elbow and threading in a plug into the tank but it is impossible to get the stock elbow off the tank.  It bumps into the elbow used for the vent lines.  I couldn't see a way to unthread either of them due to how close they were to each other.  This had me scratching my head how they did this at the factory.  The only thing I could tell was that they thread the elbow onto the port and then that actually gets attached to a hole in the tank by melting them together.  You can tell the area around the threads were melted on at some point.  Anyway, so my solution to that was to use a 3/4" barbed plug and a small section of the stock 3/4" hose.  Just make sure your hose is pointing up so that water doesn't pool in it and freeze during the winter.  Here's a picture of what I'm talking about.


The last thing left to do is to remove the drain hose that was attached to the aerator pump from the thru hull on the side of the boat.  I found it pretty difficult to fish my arm behind the front of the locker and back to the thru hulls.  It takes a bit of blind surgery skills to snip all the wire ties that have to come off.   Once the wire ties are cut then you can loosen the hose clamp and pull the hose off the thru hull.  We'll reuse that same thru hull as a vent for the Jumbo sacs later on.  Also, I found that removing the hose from the starboard side is easier if you first detach the bilge hose from it's thru hull fitting.  It is hard to get to the hose clamp on the drain line if you don't do that.

Whew, the stock ballast system is now a gonner.  You might find the pumps or hoses useful in your design or may choose to sell them.  Now we can begin the fun part of putting the new system in.

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