Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Military Water Carrier, MWC, faucet

     I have been dragging 5gallon cans of water thru the deserts and forests and camping for YEARS!  Always having to put on some sort of spout and tip the thing over and pour out the contents. Well a couple of years ago I bought some MWC's. You know the plastic(?) brown kind.
    They have a nicer wide lid with a pour spout and a  sealable vent. But you STILL have to tilt em over and pour out the contents. Hmmm, if it was cold beer would I be so annoyed?






     Since I got these I've been looking for the rumored lid with builtin pump that fits. I have scoured the internet and prowled the hardware and garden stores. So last week I went in search of..... I went to Kayak store, West Marine, Home Depot, OSH, 2 auto parts stores. Nothing in stock but West Marine was willing to bring something in on Monday to see if I could make it work. http://westmarine.com I went down this morning a picked it up. Thanks Amy and Becka!




It is a Whale brand manual pump for fresh or salt water. Nomenclature is V-pump Mk6 with standard outlet, GP0650, or hand pump galley. A bit pricey at $63USD. 12mo warranty.




Here it is showing the basic components; pump, hold down, screws.




     Next up was to figure out how to put it in the lid. The pump body has a 1" OD, the pour spout on the lid has a 3/4" ID. My solution was to remove the pour spout entirely enabling me to mount the pump. This was done with an electric knife







Next it was out to the garage to make the opening for the pump the right size. My thinking was to drill it slightly smaller than the pump to get more of a press fit and maybe I would not need the supplied holddown. First a 7'8" hole saw was used and I tried to press, by hand, the pump into it. It would not fit.





    Then a 15/16" wood drill was tried and still the pump would not go in. I wound up with using a 1" wood drill, it made for a snug fit. In the last pic you can see that I flattened the area around the hole with a file to make a good base for the pump to sit on.

This is the basic pump in the lid and the next pics show the holddown in place.






To put the holddown on I used and awl to mark one hole and then drilled it and place a screw. Then with the holddown steady I marked the other side, then removed the pump and holddown and drilled out the last hole. With the holddown on the pump can be slid in and out of the lid.




    I had to go to the hardware store and get a piece of tubing. The inlet on the bottom of the pump is 5/8" and the same size tubing was loose so I bought 24" of 9/16" tubing and crammed it on! I just stuck the whole thing in the MWC and the tubing sits on the bottom. I used a piece of 5/8" stainless steel tubing to weight the tube and keep it at the bottom.




     Once the MWC was filled with water I pumped up a mug of water, to my surprise the pump is a dual pump working on both in and out strokes. It took 7 strokes to fill a standard mug. Then over the sink I turned it upside down to see how badly it leaks................to my surprise other than some residual in the pump nothing came out!




    You can see that the pump can rotate to any direction for use. I plan on having it up toward the handle for travel and down the side for use. I may try a piece of tubing on the nozzzle for a longer reach. I like that the pump head stays in one place while the pump handle moves.

OK last pic, you can see that the holddown has 3 screws, why? you might be asking yourself. Well the third screw, the one closest to the pump, is a set screw and when screwed in pushes a wedge against the side of the pump preventing rotation.






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