[Delphinus]

So some good news and some not so good news for me. I finally got the waveboxes out and it looks like after cleaning the impellers they're both off and running again. I'm impressed by how little gunk it took to stop them dead in their tracks. I'm guessing they were probably fine when they were on and warm, but when I turned off all the pumps to add sand the other day, they cooled off and the contraction was enough to cause a problem for starting up.

So that's the happy news, they're still out of the tank on account I need two people to do the job of putting them back in and I'm never home when Linda is home and she's never home when I'm home because of the whole one parent is home with the kids all the time kind of thing wheeeeee! So yeah that's not done yet but whatev'.

The sucky news is that although I took some time and resoldered the power plug on the 6100's driver (I took pics as I went, it's a real MacGyver job - I cut up and used pieces of a paper clip to jury rig replacement pins for the plug and then soldered those in - I'll post them later) .. it turns out the broken plug was the least of the problems. Roger Vitko had suggested (about a month ago) that it might be worthwhile to replace the impeller but alas it's not the driver, it's not the impeller but it does seem to be the motor block. I've tried every other combination of motor blocks, impellers and drivers and everything works except when this one motor block is involved. Que'lle dommage. The silver lining, if it is one, seems to be that J&L has replacement motor blocks in stock (according to the website anyhow, in the meantime I've fired off an email and will see what they say back). The not-so-silver lining is that depending on which model I need (I'm a little unclear on this) it's either $255 or $270. Ouch. $325ish to buy the newer model 6105, it's almost a no-brainer not to even bother replacing the motor block.

So yeah it's not real clear to me at this point what's the better thing to do. Any advice?