Cjud7982
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2017
- Messages
- 396
- Reaction score
- 297
- What state or country do you live in
- New York
Hey guys, I thought that I would just share my recent experience with one of my tunze 6105 pumps. First of all, I love them, move tons of water, directional and dead silent, as well as controllable. Great pumps.
So, I picked up a pair of these pumps second hand a while ago (certainly out of warranty) and had them running in my tanks for about 5 or so months. I was doing some re configuring of my flow rates, paths, etc the other day to help handle some detritus and a bit of cyano and noticed one of my pumps was not working. Switched power supplies and nothing. So I assumed it was clogged, or jammed.... nope, just not doing anything. I pulled it out of the tank, undid all of my wiring to it, fully disassembled it vinegar soaked it and let it dry over night. Next morning, it tried to turn the impeller, but made it about a half a rotation and then stopped again. I noticed a little split on the wire going into the motor block. I figured it was done for and shorted out internally. However most of these pump are filled full of some sort of epoxy or urethane to permanently seal the connections of from any water, so I hoped for the best and looked elsewhere. I of course cleaned the wiring and applied a liberal amount of super glue to seal the cabling back up.
I noticed the dc power plug was loose so I cleaned the female connector as much as possible and was able to tighten the connection some by spreading the center prong out a touch. Now I could get the pump to pulse for a split second when I initially plugged it in. So I figured something might be wrong inside this little black box. I opened it up and one of the wires was separated from the circuit board inside. I also noted that one of the two leads that are soldered to the back of the female dc plug was possible bent and bridging with the other connection on the back of the plug. There was also a nick in one of the dc wires, and potential bridges on the circuit board. I also noticed some corrosion going up the wire that was broken, and it took cutting about 8 to 10 inches off of the wire to find clean copper again. I cleaned all this up, resoldered the broken wire and retouched all of the other solder joints on the board. It was more responsive and would spin for a few seconds and then stop. It would do this every time I plugged it in. At this point I thought it was done for... However I wasn't over it yet.
I went out to my garage found my acme adjustable dc power supply and soldered a couple leads to the back side of the the female plug to bypass the possibility of power supply issues as well as the connector. I hooked it up and adjusted the voltage until I was able to get the pump spinning continuously, which wound up around 6 volts. Why this worked, idk, but it did. Maybe somebody can enlighten me. I let the pump run in water like this for about 10 minutes. Then reattached the factory tunze power supply and holy cow it worked perfectly. Again let it run like this for quite some time, then hooked up one of my tunze controllers to see if it would pulse and perform all of the motor speeds as normal and it did. I took the pump out of the water, final soldered everything as factory performed, reassembled the little box and shes all alive and well again.
So, just just in case some of you guys are running one of these pumps and have a similar issue, I found it not to be in the motor block itself but a combination of corrosion within the speed controller box / wiring, and soldering that wasn't up to my standards and potentially bridging. This little exercise saved me over a weeks worth of waiting for a new pump for 300 bucks, or 2 weeks for me to ship my pump in to have it serviced. So now I am super happy after a stressful night thinking my wonderful little pump died on me.
So, I picked up a pair of these pumps second hand a while ago (certainly out of warranty) and had them running in my tanks for about 5 or so months. I was doing some re configuring of my flow rates, paths, etc the other day to help handle some detritus and a bit of cyano and noticed one of my pumps was not working. Switched power supplies and nothing. So I assumed it was clogged, or jammed.... nope, just not doing anything. I pulled it out of the tank, undid all of my wiring to it, fully disassembled it vinegar soaked it and let it dry over night. Next morning, it tried to turn the impeller, but made it about a half a rotation and then stopped again. I noticed a little split on the wire going into the motor block. I figured it was done for and shorted out internally. However most of these pump are filled full of some sort of epoxy or urethane to permanently seal the connections of from any water, so I hoped for the best and looked elsewhere. I of course cleaned the wiring and applied a liberal amount of super glue to seal the cabling back up.
I noticed the dc power plug was loose so I cleaned the female connector as much as possible and was able to tighten the connection some by spreading the center prong out a touch. Now I could get the pump to pulse for a split second when I initially plugged it in. So I figured something might be wrong inside this little black box. I opened it up and one of the wires was separated from the circuit board inside. I also noted that one of the two leads that are soldered to the back of the female dc plug was possible bent and bridging with the other connection on the back of the plug. There was also a nick in one of the dc wires, and potential bridges on the circuit board. I also noticed some corrosion going up the wire that was broken, and it took cutting about 8 to 10 inches off of the wire to find clean copper again. I cleaned all this up, resoldered the broken wire and retouched all of the other solder joints on the board. It was more responsive and would spin for a few seconds and then stop. It would do this every time I plugged it in. At this point I thought it was done for... However I wasn't over it yet.
I went out to my garage found my acme adjustable dc power supply and soldered a couple leads to the back side of the the female plug to bypass the possibility of power supply issues as well as the connector. I hooked it up and adjusted the voltage until I was able to get the pump spinning continuously, which wound up around 6 volts. Why this worked, idk, but it did. Maybe somebody can enlighten me. I let the pump run in water like this for about 10 minutes. Then reattached the factory tunze power supply and holy cow it worked perfectly. Again let it run like this for quite some time, then hooked up one of my tunze controllers to see if it would pulse and perform all of the motor speeds as normal and it did. I took the pump out of the water, final soldered everything as factory performed, reassembled the little box and shes all alive and well again.
So, just just in case some of you guys are running one of these pumps and have a similar issue, I found it not to be in the motor block itself but a combination of corrosion within the speed controller box / wiring, and soldering that wasn't up to my standards and potentially bridging. This little exercise saved me over a weeks worth of waiting for a new pump for 300 bucks, or 2 weeks for me to ship my pump in to have it serviced. So now I am super happy after a stressful night thinking my wonderful little pump died on me.
