pump repair

I'am some what of a new guy, have been doing this now for 4 years. I do striping, install car stops, signs and ballards. so I don't just do striping and I'am sure all you folks do the same and then some. So here is my question to all you bigger companies out there I have a graco 3000 nice light machine does a good job, I keep a log of all jobe I do each year for example price job cost. l ft, stencils, and many other items I had to replace my pump kit 3 times last year, painted around 300.000 ft of line and curbs now don't make jokes for me being a small guy but I really need to know if that is about right on maintance or do I need to look further into it.

I bought a used LL3000 in December of 2003. Packings lasted about a year and a half/probably 100,000 LF + a bunch of stencil work. Was still working fine when I stored it in December 2005. That's about all I can tell you on that machine. My first LL3900II (bought new 2000) still has ALL it's original pump parts. Replaced the whip a few years ago, which failed due to being dragged and of course many gun/pivot wheel cables. My second LL3900II(bought new 2001 I think) has had pump work once, and two pressure relief valves replaced, one gun rebuild, cables and one front tire. No problems with the used LL3900III or LL5900III (bought in November 2005) yet.Not a bad track record. Either I've been really lucky or GRACO makes one (expletive) of a machine. I'd have to agree with the latter.

I had a LL 3000 that I used for about 5 yrs. and never had to rebuild the pump. It was a great little machine and had a lot of paint run through it. You might want to check and make the inside of the pump is not scared.

Makes a big big difference if you run latex or oil base paint.

Okie, that doesn't sound good. I don't know much about a 3000. I use a 3900, a 3500, and a speedflow 5000. I have repacked the graco's once each in the past three years. I have also had to replace the pressure relief valve on the 3900. Do you use throat seal or packing oil? I use that everyday before I start striping. Or maybe the 3000 is just over worked.

Dwan said it makes a big difference whether you're running latex of oil base paint. Just wondering which is harder on the pump?

Waterborne (latex) is much harder on the metal pump parts and the packings. It has to do with the solids that are found in the waterborne paints. Jim

I forgot to mention I use ONLY Chlorinated rubber. I probably haven't sprayed over 15 gallons of latex in the last 6-7 years.

All of you might have helped is some way or another, I only use latex and when I'am not striping I have water in my machine and they say that is a no no, keep in mind I have been doing this going on 4 years now and when I got into this I bought a used machine and did not know how to use it at first I thought I lost my mind at first but it has been good to me.

Your probably better off leaving paint in the machine rather than water, but if there is no reason why you HAVE to use latex, I would switch to oil. You can leave paint in for weeks/months with no problems. However, if your having to repack 3 times for 300,000' something is terribly wrong.

Okie, When you store that machine in that climate, Ok. i mean, you should run mineral spirits thru the machine and leave in. you don't want water freezing up in there. if you are saying you just leave water in the machine when not in use during your season, then you are probably cleaning out the machine with water and leaving water in right? That's a not a good idea because you are always going to have some dried up paint passing thru the pump, and what happens is these small dried pieces of paint have scoured your pump rod or sleeve, or worse both. You are better off switching to Oil-based paints, or leaving one paint in machine get a second for another color. We replaced packing kits twice in one year in our 3900. the first time we did it ourselves. After we discovered we were having problems with paint gobbing up at the foot where the Pick-up hose connects, and cleaned it 3 times in one week, and finally the pump wouldn't prime, we took it to a SW, to have it diagnosed...we were just too busy to mess with it at the time. They discovered the scoured parts, and told us it was from paint pieces passing thru. We knew at that point it was probably our cleaning it with water to change colors multiple times, we have another machine too, and rarely change colors in it, and have no problem. We will probably end up switching to Oil paint soon also.

One other note also. During the time we had the paint gobbing up problem we were switching from one color to another with no water between, same brand latex. Air was obviously getting in somewhere and drying the paint up around that point, but we were not able to diagonose that since the machine quit priming, and we took the machine to SW. We had been using water to clean the machine ou prior to that.