Ballast pump keeps blowing circuit

2004 Wakesetter 23 LSV, front ballast drain pump keeps blowing the circuit breaker. Fill pumps all work great, rear drain pumps work great, but front drain pump will run for a minute or two then blow the breaker. If I wait a few minutes, reset it, it will then run another few minutes until it pops the breaker again. It has been doing this for a long time, so I pulled the drain pump apart to see if there was anyting stuck inside it. No, it is perfectly clean and normal inside the pump. Funny thing is this; I think the breaker that keeps blowing is the bilge breaker. So I looked at the bilge pump, but everything seems OK there too and it seems to work properly. I never have the bilge pump switch turned on when I am draining the ballast tanks, so I am confused why it would be blowing this breaker. Malibu must have wired the crain pumps to the same circuit as the bilge pumps. Any idea where to start?

If it has done this since new (2004) then maybe you have a wiring issue from the factory. If this is something that is relatively new either the breaker is bad or the pump is bad - you can test them with a meter and find if the pump is drawing more amps than the breaker can handle. Say it is a 25 amp breaker and the pump draws 20 amps then replace the breaker and vise versa if the pump draws way too many amps when it gets hot then the pump is bad - I hope this helps.

My fill pump was doing this when it has sucked up seaweed and got clogged. However, you said it was your drain pump. Not too likely that seaweed got through the fill and into the drain, but it is something you may want to double check. I hope that helps.

The first thing to check is if the circuit breaker is big enough for the load. The circuit breaker should have a little margin over the rated load for the pump, ie, if the pump will draw 8 amps you should have a 10 amp circuit breaker.

If the circuit breaker has the proper rating then you might want to measure the actual current the pump is drawing. This may not be all that easy to do, however. If you can obtain a large enough amp meter and disconnect one lead from the pump you simply put the meter in series. There are clamp on meters that easily clip around a wire but these are expensive and not many people have them.

If the pump is drawing more current than it is supposed to then either something is jamming it, the bearings are bad or the internal windings have shorted. Bad bearings or a short probably means that you need a new pump.

If the pump is drawing the appropriate amount of current then it is possible that the circuit breaker is bad. I have seen this happen, where a circuit breaker simply gets weak and won't hold rated current.

There is another possibility: it is possible that the voltage to the pump is too low and it is drawing too much current as a result. get a couple of tiny pins that you can poke into the wires as close to the pump as possible and measure the voltage while it is pumping. Ideally you would get 12 volts. I wouldn't be surprised if you only had 11. If you have less than 11 volts at the pump then it will draw excessive current.

My recommendation in such a case would be to re-wire the pump so that it is on its own dedicated circuit and make the wires for that circuit a bit bigger than what they currently are.

Rod

Installed a new pump today, tested it out on the lake, problem solved! Thanks everyone.