- From what I understand this pump head,
this whole assembly here is actually
going to be available by itself.
It is finally here.
In this video we're gonna un-box it, install it,
see what the performance is, and that's coming up next.
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As you saw in the beginning of the video,
I kind of talked about Blichmann releasing
the conversion kit for March and Chugger pumps
several months ago.
So it's finally here and, full disclosure on this,
I did not purchase the kit.
Blichmann sent it to me for review
and you know how-to video, how to install it
and all that stuff, so just wanted to let you guys know
that I did not purchase it, so.
Without further ado, let's get into it.
So, in the box, let's check it out here.
Very nice, got a metal bracket, a stainless bracket.
One of the things that I saw right off the bat
that I liked about this was that the two holes
in the bolt configuration here
are pretty much exactly the same as
the ones that are on the pump.
So if you have your pump mounted to a bench already
this bracket system is gonna mount
right exactly to where it was before.
We got that.
Got an adapter plate
that will attach the head to the pump.
Got the main pump head itself,
and inside of there is the impeller.
And that is the same impeller that comes
in the Riptide pump.
I guess there were a couple different colors,
from what I understand, a black one and a brown one.
But this one comes with a brown, which I think is
the later model, higher flow.
The impeller cup, if you will.
And then the actual impeller head itself.
Now one thing I did notice about this is
that it comes with a stainless steel pop-it valve.
The one that came in the original one that I have,
and they may have changed it since then,
is actually a plastic one like what you would find
inside of a keg.
It definitely looks a little bit sturdier
and I think the threads probably,
That was one of the things kind of concerned me
about it a little was the threads were plastic
and it was threading into a big piece of stainless steel.
I did have some concerns about that but
it looks like they fixed that issue
and other than that, looks just like
the pump head that's on the Riptide.
Got a tri-clamp.
Instruction book.
And then we've got several screws and an O-ring.
There's some screws that come for the March pump.
And some screws that come for the Chugger pump,
which those are there.
And I assume that all these others screws and whatnot,
along with the rubber bushings,
are to bolt the actual pump itself to the bracket system
so that you can have some additional space.
What that's for is when you replace the head on there
it obviously is a larger footprint so
that will actually allow it to give some space.
So if you set it on the floor it's not gonna hit
if you orient it a certain way.
Without further ado, let's jump into it.
Now this pump is a...
It's the 809-PL-HS,
which is the polysulfone housing on it.
And this is supposed to replace that so
let's just jump into it.
Alright, take this off.
I will be very curious to see how this pump performs
once we put the Riptide head on it because
in the previous side-by-side-by-side comparison video,
and I'll put a card to that up here,
when I did that video we did notice that
the March pump that I had, the 809, was probably
the least performing out of the Riptide, the Chugger
and the March pump.
So I'll be interested to see if when we replace this
does it, in fact, increase the performance
of this March pump, which would be pretty nice.
'Cause it was somewhat anemic
compared to the other two pumps.
Got that off of there.
According to the instructions that I read,
kinda pre-read this stuff, so,
According to the instructions I read
you do not take off this main piece here.
That piece is gonna stay with it.
What you're gonna do is you're actually going to
put this piece on.
This piece is gonna go on and you're gonna line up
the screw holes with the holes
that are on the housing here, the impeller housing.
And then it comes with the screws for the March pump.
There's two different sizes here, it looks like.
It looks like maybe one of them is a little bit longer
than the other so apparently the threads on the Chugger pump
are a little bit harder to get down in there.
Go ahead and drop these in.
And as far as tightening these down, I kind of suggest,
and I don't think there's gonna be any warpage issues
with it really but I would suggest that you
put all the screws in and tighten them down
in a criss-cross pattern and I'll show you exactly
that I'm talking about here in just a second.
I put 'em in and then I just kind of run 'em down gently,
not til they're exactly tight, get 'em kind of finger tight.
Get 'em down there.
And then what I would do is I would actually tighten them
from a criss-cross pattern so this one,
then that one,
and then that one.
That attaches the housing on it
that the tri-clamp will actually attach to.
And basically from there it's pretty simple.
I won't attach it to the base just yet.
So you're gonna put the impeller housing in there.
The impeller can go in there.
There's an O-ring here,
and that actually goes down inside of the body of the unit.
There's a small thrust washer that goes in there
and you want to make sure that you don't lose that thing.
So we'll put it together.
Grab the tri-clamp.
Gotta unscrew this quite a ways in order to
get it to work on there.
Put that on there.
I'll turn this around a little bit so it doesn't interfere
with the other stuff on there and give me
a little different orientation.
And tighten it up.
And basically, you've just turned your March pump
into a Riptide pump.
Since I have mine mounted to a bench
I'm gonna leave the bracket off so that I can
just mount it directly to the bench itself.
But for those of you that would getting the kit
and want to use it as a standalone pump
this is definitely a nice item
that will come in handy for you,
so that you keep all the clearance of everything.
I will be back here in just a minute and
we'll do some testing.
So here it is installed on the bench.
I'll go ahead and turn it on.
(whirring)
Come over here to the kettle
and take a look at what we've got.
Looks like it has a pretty good flow.
I don't know if it's quite as strong as the Riptide is
but it certainly has a good amount of flow to it.
As far as noise goes it's definitely
quieter than the Chugger.
All right, I'm gonna switch over to the Riptide pump
and I'll be right back.
So here we are now, we've got the Riptide pump hooked up.
Go ahead and turn it on.
(whirring)
Come back over and take a look.
See what we've got here.
Definitely seems like it has a little bit more
force than the March pump but I think the motor
is a little bit larger and a little bit more powerful.
But as far as noise goes,
definitely quieter than the March pump
but not bad in the noise department at all.
So the tests were pretty interesting.
It looks like that it did add a little bit of thrust
to the stock March pump.
I can't say that it upgraded it to a full-blown Riptide pump
with the amount of flow that came out it, it looked like
it was still a little bit less than what the Riptide was.
But I would definitely say it is a nice upgrade.
I did go ahead and put it on the stand, just to show you.
Without the stand it does get pretty front-heavy
because of how heavy the assembly is on the front.
With the stand on there it's definitely much more stable.
I think it'd be an awesome addition if somebody's just
using it around on the ground.
Final thoughts on it, is it for everyone?
No, probably not.
But who I think it is for would be someone that has
a plastic housing, the polysulfone or however they say that,
on a current pump, and they don't want to quite
spend the money for a Riptide but they
want the functionality of being able to take that head apart
as well as having a nice stand to be able to move it around
wherever rather than have it on a block of wood
or something like that.
I've seen a lot of different things like that.
I definitely think that for $99,00
it's worth the money just being able to clean the pump
as easily as you can with this device.
I know since I've had the Riptide pump
on the wort side of my system
I've cleaned it a lot more than I ever did before,
which makes me feel a little bit better
about my brewing process.
All in all I think it's a good device.
Leave a comment down below on what your thoughts are.
Is it overpriced, is it something you're interested in?
What do you think about it?
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This has been Brian for Short Circuited Brewers.
We'll see you on the next video.