Pump Motor Out?

[cooltouch]

Well, yesterday morning I was wondering why the pump hadn't kicked on, come to find out it should have. The timer tripped. I checked the breaker box and no breakers have tripped. This motor is not that old -- maybe 2 or 3 years. Which has me wondering -- what is the likelihood that maybe a wear item inside the motor may have quit (too soon). In the past, when we had a pool guy who knew how to work on these motors, he replaced a couple (I think) of capacitors that got it running again. His repair didn't last, though -- maybe 6 months. So I'm thinking that, even if I can get the motor running again, I should plan ahead toward its eventual replacement.

My pool uses a Hayward pump and filter. The pump is a Hayward Super II, model SP3005X7AZ, rated for a 3/4 HP motor. This information leads to my first question. The motor that is installed now, the one that was the replacement a few years ago, is -- far as I know -- more than 3/4 HP. The only thing on the label that appears to be horsepower related is a reference to THP of 1.65. I don't know what THP is, although it's mentioned twice on the label. Total horsepower? Seems an odd number. For this motor's frame size, I've been finding 1 HP and a few 1.5 HP motors, so far no 0.75 HP motors. And to make matters even more confusing, I note that in my Sig I have the motor's HP listed as 1.5. And I don't recall where I got that number. The motor is made by US Motors. Its catalog number is ASB654 and its model number is K63CXDGH-5169. When I search on the model number, I get hits for a 56J-frame motor, which is mentioned on the label.

I guess one question I have at this point is -- does it hurt a pump to use a motor with more HP than it was designed for? My pump has been handling this current motor without difficulties, so I'm somewhat inclined to replace it with the same make and model -- the motor's longevity is my only cause for concern. Make that two questions. Can somebody explain why one can replace one (or more) capacitors on these motors to get them running again?

 

[JamesW]

The pump original motor was total hp of 0.75.

Check the voltage line to line.

 

[cooltouch]

I know it was 0.75, based on the literature I've found on the pump. My question was would it hurt anything to run a more powerful motor.

Yeah, checking the line voltage is something that occurred to me after I posted the above note. I sure hope that isn't the problem. The motor is about 60 feet away from the breaker panel and the line is buried.

 

[JamesW]

It's ok to use a more powerful motor.

 

[cooltouch]

I have some more info to report on this pump mystery. Yesterday morning, the pump started up normally -- when the timer triggered it to "on." It ran all day and lasted until it shut off. This had me stumped, so I was looking forward to this morning to see if it would repeat this behavior and it did. It started up just fine this morning.

So now I'm wondering low long the motor is gonna last before it decides to take another four or five day break. I'm really curious what led to this sort of behavior. On the timer, there was one day when I realized I had left it manually in the "on" position, so I switched it off. The switch was cycling the motor on and off for a couple of days with no response, until yesterday morning when the motor decided to start when the switch was tripped. I have it set to turn on at 7:30am, a time I'm usually outside, doing pool maintenance among other things. So I heard the motor start both yesterday morning and this morning. I'm wondering if there might be some sort of thermal control circuit in the motor that just took it a while to reset? Since the motor started working again, I haven't done anything at the pump and/or filter to change flow characteristics. About all I did was clean out the inline leaf basket a couple days ago, but it wasn't that clogged up.