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Old     (Jeff)      Join Date: May 2010       08-21-2011, 7:03 PM Reply   
Well, it's been a few months now with my ~2,200 lb automated ballast system on my '00 MC 230 VRS and I've had to go through a couple of minor revisions due to a few small details that I never picked up in the various writeups I read.

1) Fly High's bags are not a "true" 3/4" NPS thread. The female threads in the bags themselves may technically be but, apparently due to the softness of the material, it appears that they oversize their male fittings to account for the stretch in the female fittings. This is not worth mentioning if you're using all Fly High fittings into the bags but I wouldn't recommend planning on screwing a real 3/4" NPS male into a bag unless it's a really low stress situation (Maybe in a bow sac).

I started with the T800 pumps screwed straight into the rear bags. This seemed ok at first although I couldn't screw them in very tight at all. I'd get them tight and then the female threads would stretch out and jump to the next loosest thread. I let it ride this way and one of my 750s pried the drain pump out of itself while on the water. The contents of the bag emptied into the bilge and created enough standing water for it to get into my transmission.

I went to a Fly-High fitting with a flow rite and about a 3" section of hose to connect the drain pumps to the bags and this has been a lot safer. This unfortunately has introduced some priming issues on drain though.

3/4" NPT screws into the Fly High bags a little bit better but not as good as FlyHigh's own fittings. The advantage of using a PVC 3/4" extension is that you can "weld" it to the bag with PVC cement. The pump material is chemically incompatible with PVC cement and doesn't bond. I've tried. The 3/4" NPS pumps will screw nicely into the female NPT PVC fitting.

2) I found that the T800 pumps (and possibly the T1200) prime significantly better with the pumps oriented sideways with the discharge on the bottom and horizontal. They don't work that well in the orientation that all of the documentation shows (Sideways with the discharge pointing vertical). The second best option is for them to be vertical but even with the pump completely below the water line I still had the occasional failure to prime.

If the discharge isn't on the bottom and horizontal I've found that one burp of air will airlock them on the drain pumps. So, when the bags would get low and that first time the pump would get a little air they would stop pumping. If I was lucky I could power cycle the pump and get it to drain again. I usually ended up with 2-3" of water left in the bottom of the sacs (That's a lot of weight on a 750 lb bag). With the discharge at the bottom it gets 99% of the water out without having to babysit.

I'm doing more experimentation with the pump orientation before I make any "permanent" mods but what looks like the best option is a 3/4" PVC street elbow (NPT) glued directly to the bag and the pump screwed into that. Then I have a Flow Rite quick release on the discharge side and a quick release SAE connector for the wiring. So, if I want to remove the bag I remove the pump with it.

Last edited by Jeff; 08-21-2011 at 7:06 PM.

 
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