Can't Get the Pressure Up

CAN'T GET THE PRESSURE UP!

One of the most common phone calls regarding breakdowns is "I can't get the pressure up on my sprayer, the pump must be worn out" In 90% of these cases the pump is fine, it is usually a worn pressure relief valve or electric pressure regulating valve.

If your sprayer does lose pressure it is a very easy exercise to find the problem. The first step is to check your pumps performance which is easily done by either two ways:

1.If your spray unit has a freshwater tank, simply change your suction tap to draw out of the fresh water tank, start your pump up and see how long it takes to pump your fresh water tank dry. Work this back to your pumps flow rate to see if it is pumping enough liquid.

2.If you don't have a fresh water tank then simply pump out of your main tank, take the delivery fitting off your pump and measure the amount of water pumped in a minute.

If your pump does check out o.k, (but you still can't get pressure up) it means that most of your flow is getting bypassed back to the tank. To find out where, it is simply a matter of putting a few hundred litres of water in the tank, start your pump (at spraying RPM) and turn all the boom sections on. Then look inside the tank and see which by-pass hose is returning most of the flow.

The final step is to then trace that hose back and see which valve is the culprit!