Help reversing a non-reversible Jabsco water puppy

Hey all! Ive read a few posts from here about people with Jabsco one way pumps that reverse the leads and use them as two way pumps anyways.

I picked up a 6360-0001 water puppy pretty cheap and am trying to do this. When I switch the leads the motor tries to spin, but because of the way the impeller blades are bend in the impeller housing it doesnt want to flip around and spin the other way.

If I turn it off and on a few times eventually it will spin in reverse. Then the same thing goes on switching back to forward.

Is there some way I can trim the impeller down so that it will work better as a two way?

I can post up some pics if it helps.

Here are two pictures of the pump with the impeller visible. You can see the extra peice of plastic in there that the impeller gets snagged on when you try to put it in reverse.

If you take that peice out it never gets snagged but it never pumps any water!

I think the Ballast Puppy has a little bigger motor than the Water Puppy. That's probably the difference and why you can easily reverse the Ballast Puppy and not the Water Puppy.

I have read quite a few posts on here last evening when I searched for "jabsco" and "reverse". It seems like people with factory installed systems with reversible jabsco pumps are having this same problem.

Some people greased their impeller and housing all up and some people cut their impeller down. I would love to know how to just cut mine down.

I cant wait to try out the grease method tonight.

Some of the people said you needed heavy gauge wire. I was running tiny speaker wire from the fat wire coming out of the pump.

Does anyone know if I need a fuse on both the positive and negative wire coming out of the pump?
It seems like I might since I am reversing the polarity?

No you only need one fuse, it doesn't matter if it is on the + or the - I run 20amp fuses on my motors, any smaller tend to burn out regularly.
You have two options with the wiring, either very heavy wire from the battery to the switch to the pump, or use a relay to go directly from the battery to the pump with a remote wire up to the switch.
I use a silicon grease with teflon in it to lube mine and they work great.

Darren is right. Use silicon grease and you wont have that problem with the impeller getting stuck. IAs for the wiring of the pump here is what I used when I put in a system in my old boat. Keep in mind this is how you wire up the switch.

Looks good. I havnt purchased my switch yet, I have been looking at some on iboats.com and westmarine.com. I would like a rocker switch that said fill/empty and ballast but I dont know where to get one.

Also, tonight I greased up the impeller (with some vinyl protectant for a test) and used thicker gauge wire. I was able to go forward and reverse perfect! Filled up a fat sac from a bucket and emptied it several times. Dang its fast too.

Anyways, next comes planning out how to run my hoses. I know that my fatsac in the ski locker will be easily filled and drained because the ski locker is slanted downwards and the pump will only have to pull about 2-3 feet to prime.

The bag that I want to put in the bow is another situation. The hose will actually have to go up under the top edge of the boat to be hidden and then back down into the bow. It will also be at least 15 feet long. Im sure it will fill fine but I dont see how it would be able to empty.

Im attaching on a drawing of how i was thinking. Any advice on how I could successfully set this up in a I/O 18.5 boat would be awesome.

I was thinking about putting a y splitter right on the outside of the pump that would have closeoff valves in case something busted.

I'm sure the silicone or grease would work too, but I always flip the pump back to the direction it will be going next when I'm finished using it. For instance:

If I've just filled my system, I flip it to drain for a second to flip the impellar back. If I've just drained it, I flip it to fill for a second to flip the impellar back.

Then the next time I flip on the switch, the impellar is already in the right direction. Once the impellar is warm from running, it's easy to flip back.