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Kranzle USA pressure washer perfection.

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Hey everybody. This is the original Josh back again with Kinsley USA, pressure washer perfection. And this is again part of our troubleshooting and repair series. We have as you can see done the first series of check valve related service and diagnosis, and now we're going to move towards the unloader valve. So the unloader valve, we would have come to this spot because we have most likely lost pressure, if not all the majority of when we squeeze the trigger on the gun. In a lot of cases, the unloader valve, when it, when it requires attention could be stuck where you're only getting a tiny little stream at the end of your nozzle release the trigger on the gun, no changes in pressure when releasing and squeezing the trigger. And one other thing that you'll notice on a total stop featured machine is more than likely the, the total stop will not actuate.

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You let go of the trigger on the gun. It's still sitting there humming. And that is because the, the unloader valve not permitting the pump to, to build pressure. Doesn't allow the pressure to build up in the ways that are necessary to trigger the total stop and to actuate this pressure switch assembly. So we're going to take a look at how to disassemble the unloader valve and also how to rebuild that sequence of parts that go into the inlet or valve. So first we're gonna look at the unloader valve components that are on the Chron's lip pump. So the unloader valve is not just one component. It's most often understood that this is the unloader valve of my pressure washer. And while that's not inaccurate, it's, it's not the only part. This is just merely the control piston for the unloader valve.

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It allows you to adjust the output pressure as well as fine tune, how much pressure the pump needs to create in order for it to go into bypass the control piston on the unloader valve or the hand wheel. It has a number of different names. I like control in the best that control piston. Whenever you release a trigger on the gun, its job is to push this direction and push open the bypass valve, which is on the opposite side of the pump. We're going to take a look at that as well. On the [inaudible] pump, that's only 11 six, the 1122, the 1622 and the 1322. It is equipped with a sub-component that is an easy start valve. The purpose of the, an easy start valve is to alleviate load on the motor whenever the motor starts. So whenever we have complete loss of pressure, this easy start valve and it seats, those are our primary suspect.

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So we're going to look at those a little bit deeper as well. The last part of the unloader valve is the outlet check valve that is in the discharge part of the pump and what its job is, is to close. Whenever the trigger is released on the pump flow stops at the, the gun comes back, pushes that check valve closed pressure builds up enough to push that control in thereby opening the bypass on the other side of the pump. So that's the general science behind the unloader valve. There's a number of steps in order to dig into the unloader valve. First, I would recommend taking the screws out for our pressure switch that will be in your way to being able to really see, to rebuild the unloader valve components. I recommend doing all this while the valve housing is still on the, the pump and motor assembly, because then there won't be a need to put the brass valve housing into a bench voice, which could score Mark or otherwise damage the soft brass valve housing. All right, so let's get started. So we've got a couple of different tools over here. This cap that they put on to the, the end of the unloader valve control piston can be a real challenge to pop off. So a nice clean flat-blade screwdriver.

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It's helpful

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So as you can see, I've had to break the end cap on this, on loader valve and marked it up pretty well. Trying to get that cap off. They're not always this difficult. They are a challenge, but this one was giving me a whole lot of extra trouble. So hopefully you'll have a little more success. I'm not exactly gentle with these things. So inside your control piston, there is a small brass nut to prevent you from being able to unwind the handle all the way so that there is a limitation to how far it can be unscrewed that is kept in place with a little dab of Loctite. When we go to reassemble, it I'll show you just a little dab will keep that nut in place, but right now we have to break it loose. So you'll need a five 16 or an eight millimeter nut driver or small socket to get in there to unscrew that small,

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Not there you go.

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Once we've removed, removed the, the jam nut or a limitation nut, you can unscrew the handle on the unloader valve all the way, and it'll slide all the way off. Like, so now if you choose to do so for, for the actual mechanics that are watching this video, if you thread this out all the way, and you have a skinny of 19 millimeter wrench, you may be able to get it down in there and undo the control piston from the valve housing without having to take this handle all the way off your choice, which way to go. But I'm going to show you how to do it with removing the handle all the way. So right here, you'll notice there are two small jam nuts. These are 10 millimeter nuts. These nuts have the responsibility of preventing us from being able to apply too much tension to this spring. You don't want to manipulate the position of those nuts on your brand new pressure washer. And if you replace the unloader STEM or control piston on your pressure washer on loader valve, you want to try to set those nuts, the same place on the new STEM, and I'll show you how to do that easy way here in a minute as well.

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We broken loose the on loader valve control piston I'm want to use socket just to cheat and make it easy to unscrew the rest of the way. And here we have the unloader valve control piston.

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So

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In a later video, we're going to go over short cycling and some of the components that can cause that as well, it's not normally the primary suspect. However, if the seals have worn enough, the pressure that will normally cause the pump to stay in bypass by pushing that, that piston forward will allow the pressure to bleed past the seals and pull back open under the tension of the spring. And that is how this can trigger short cycling. But as I mentioned, this is not normally our, our primary suspect. So as I mentioned, we're going to remove your pressure switch a further discussion of the control piston of the pressure switch will also be featured in the short cycling video. So return to that. So once you use your flat blade screwdriver to loosen up these screws, be careful not to lose the nuts that are on the other side of the micro switch housing. You'll have to slide the screws all the way out. Now we can remove the pressure switch microswitch housing. I like to store the screws back in the housing so that we don't lose the screws or the nuts

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Couple turns we'll do.

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So, as I mentioned earlier, the control piston pushes open the bypass valve. Imagine it a IM imagine an invisible line going through the center of the control piston and where that exits the other side of the pump. That is where our bypass check valve is, which is also our easy start valve on this pump for that we'll need a 15 millimeter socket get into this tiny space.

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There's your easy start valve here. You'll see you

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Easy start valve inside the cap. So while we're here, the easy start valve permits a little bit of flow at the very beginning moment of the motor starting. So inside of this plunger is another ball bearing and spring. So one of the things that you're going to be encouraged to check if there is pressure loss is to see if one whether or not the ball-bearing and spring are still present in the center of the piston. And you can do that simply by looking up and trying to see through.

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And once you blow the water out, you can get a little Glint of the ball bearing. It's not going to be visible in the camera. So we won't be able to give you a real close up of that. But the other method to testing the easy start valve to see if it is a culprit of pressure loss is to shake it. And like I said, the ball bearing inside of this piston is pressure, or the ball-bearing inside of this piston has, is spring loaded. So if you shake it and you can hear it rattling back and forth, then that means that this easy start valve is bad. In this case, this one would not be our culprit because there's no rattle now in this pump model, as well as all of the other kinds of pump models that do not have an easy start valve.

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The principle thing that we're looking for on this side of the pump is there is a stainless steel seat to which this seats against, and in some other pumps, our ball bearing does the job instead. So very easy thing to check. If, you know, you have very suspicious pressure loss that just happened out of nowhere, everything was working fine. And now it's not, we're going to look down inside there and see if we can see any debris. So as you can see in this particular housing, it's nice and clean. There's nothing in there, but if there were some metal shavings or spider guts in your garden hose some leaves from the end of the hose going into the garden any of that junk that gets stuck there, that's going to be easily the root cause of this, not closing and complete loss of pressure.

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You can go from having great pressure to none like that. If this is not closing all the now for the purpose of your routine maintenance and service of the pressure washer, we're going to have to remove the seat, which means removing a stainless steel clip. So those are going to look like this. There's an O-ring that seats, the clip of all the repairs that you're going to do to a friend's Lil pump. This is probably the most challenging getting this C clip out is, is quite a challenge on these pumps. We have a lot of funny names for it that involve a little bit of profanity. I'm going to I was, I was asked if I would shelve those for this particular presentation. However if you hear me cussing, it's because I'm struggling with it as well. We have one here. There is another one on this other outlet check valve, which we'll take a look at next, In order to remove the outlet check valve. And you needed a 24 millimeter wrench to remove the discharge fitting or outlet fitting. And when you open this up, be careful, you don't drop the ball bearing and spring. I already know what I'm looking for. So I'm most certainly will probably drop it.

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So here's our outlet fitting.

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Then here, you'll see the spring.

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And then

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Here is your ball bearing. Now, if per chance that your machine is not going into bypass or the total stop is not actually waiting when your pressure washer, when you release the trigger on the gun. If you notice that the pressure on the gauge is still up high toward, you know, at least at the operating pressure or above this check valve may not be seating. So this is another place where if, if junk got into your bypass check valve, you want to open up this outlet check valve and clean and inspected as well. Whenever you release the trigger on the gun and the machine goes into bypass, the gauge should drop to zero because there isn't any pressure inside the valve housing at that time. So, as I mentioned, Mike want to get a closer look, there's another seat and clip in there that has to be removed

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For those of you service centers that are watching this video for instruction on how to service a pressure washer pump. You would probably want to invest into this tool for reinstalling, the see clip for the outlet check valve, as well as the bypass check valve. The sleeve goes in to help guide the C clip for the allied check valve. And then the plunger by itself will be used for installing the C clip on the bypass check valve. This tool right here is available is made by [inaudible] and will be available through us. So make sure you ask us about the unloader service tool the, and loader service tool. When you get all your components for servicing your Krenz Lil pumps now

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For our bypass check valve right now, we're going to go ahead and dig out the C clip. It's going to be a little bit challenging to see we're going to try to give you a good angle of it. So right here, you'll see where the tip of the screwdriver is sitting. I'm pushing tension on the C clip. The little channel that I've set, the, the screwdriver into is actually a machine by the Germans to give you ability to, to dig that out of there. Now, if you can walk the clip, the opening of the, see clip around with a pick tool and your little screwdriver, you can get into a position where it's a little bit easier to bend, and I'm going to show you a picture of it bent. And just a second.

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Now you can see it, but

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So now you've seen how to bend the C clips so that you can remove it. Now that I've gotten it bent, I can get it to wobble around inside there. Sometimes you can get them to bend enough that it'll just completely come loose. Sometimes you may have to use a pair of needle nose pliers, or you might be able to dig it out with your pick. Now, the seat can sometimes be a challenge to get out if you're servicing an older pressure washer or any of the larger Krens Lil pump, especially if it's a much higher pressure pump. Those seats can be a little bit tricky to get out a neat little trick to removing the seat. If it is a challenge to take out, get yourself to use your flat blade screwdriver. That's small enough to fit into the diameter of the seat, but wide enough that it, it, it won't go all the way through. So if you have a screwdriver that will work for that, put it down inside, give it a little tap and out comes the seat. So, as I mentioned, the seat is sealed in place with a small overing. So you'll need your pick and now outcomes your rain.

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In most cases, if I'm doing a whole pump rebuild, I may not elect to complete this step at this particular juncture, but I'm going to go ahead and show you how to re-install the, the O-ring seat and clip, and then put our new easy start valve easy star slash bypass valve back into the port. So here we have, we've shown you pictures of the O-ring seat and clip. You can lubricate the O-ring with, you know, your preferred lubricant. We'll use Vaseline around here, cause it's very handy. You want to make sure that that seats to all the way down into the housing, if you have the [inaudible] see clip tool, you can use the plunger just to kind of guide the Irving down into place. If not, your pick will also work, just don't damage the O-ring, get it down into position, and then you will feed next

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The seat

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Once again, make sure it sits properly. And that's something I should point out. Here's a seat looking from two different directions. This is the outward side of the, this is the O-ring side of the seat, and you can see it has a little bit of a groove to it, and here's a seat with the earring and position. So like we said, first, we're going to install the O-ring and get it seated in place,

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Followed by the seat

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Before installing the clip. I like to take the plunger or any other tool. You could use the tip of your nut driver to push down, but I want to push that seat down into the air ring and make sure that it looks like it's sitting flat inside the valve housing the C clips, not going to see it if it's not sitting down all the way. So now for the fun part, you're see clip. So with, with a nice small pair of needle nose pliers, I like to guide the C clip in with the opening of the C clip facing out of the housing. Then I can use my flat screwdriver to push down on the center of that. See clip just to get it to seat down in position. Come take a closer look. Once the C clip is down in the housing, I use the flat screwdriver to push it, just pass the threads like so, so you probably just heard the sound of it clicking into position.

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It's almost like it's just seated in the spot. So it, it has a certain kind of sound to it. When it gets down into a good spot. Now taking your flat screwdriver, you're going to rotate that clip so that it rotates flat, or it gets close to rotating flat inside the housing. And I like the opening to be away from the, the little port that we use to bend the C clip out. So we'll rotate that with the flat screwdriver in the absence of our Krenz little, this is where use your flat screwdriver, or maybe two flat screwdrivers to push the clip. The rest of the way in the, with your Krenz LA C clip plunger.

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There was that, that snap,

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And it is now seated in position. So we've got a re-installed seat for our bypass valve. All we have left is to install our easy start valve assembly. So as this is a new pump, we're not going to use new parts to replace the old ones. Our original easy start valve is in good working condition. The seat can sometimes be a problem that you may change by itself. So you can retain this and reuse. It provided that this is still in good working order. And then to re-install it then to re-install it just going to invert the plug and the piston hand start the, the plug. So we don't want to cross thread any of the brass parts, and you can tighten up with your, I recommend snugging it with your ratchet. And then if you want to, with your impact gun, give it a little extra snug. And there you have it. We've replaced our bypass valve. And in this case, which is also the easiest heart valve and change out the seat and the clip bullet beneath. So next, we're going to do the same thing on the outlet check valve, which once again is a little bit of a challenge. So now we're going to invert the pressure washer so that we can get a good, good look at the outlet check.

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So sealing up against our outlet check valve was the ball bearing and spring assembly

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Came with the outlet fitting. Now, this is another part where we'll re replace it for the purpose of the video. We're going to replace the the seat and the clip and the O-ring, but we'll be able to reuse this ball-bearing cause it's still in good condition. There's no pit marks. There's no imperfections, no grooves or anything. So this is still nice and shiny mirror finish. We can reuse it. Same thing with the overing, that's all, or the same thing with the spring, that's in the outlet fitting. And along with that, you can also replace this O-ring on the outlet fitting that's in part of the kit. We would do that also if we were doing a full routine maintenance on the pump.

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So on this one, removing the clip is a little bit easier because it's a slightly larger bore and they have another little port where you can put your screwdriver in here. Mike, you can get a picture of that once again, just like the other one. If you push in the clip and use your pick set to maneuver the opening around to the groove, it's easier to bend. So we just popped it open be careful wear safety glasses. While you're doing this just in case it does shoot out and hit you in the face.

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Then here we have

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Are busted clip, removing the seat for this will be much like the other seat. Put your screwdriver in pop Now comes the seat. Make sure you remove your own ring.

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First, install the earring.

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Now this one, because the bore is wider than where the seat sits in the center. It's a little easier to use your finger to get the ring down in place. Then you can install the seat the same way

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As I mentioned with the other seat,

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Tap it down into, so it seats with the earring. Now here comes my favorite part about this tool. So this is going to be our guide for getting the clip down inside the valve housing. And it's much easier with, with this port than it was with our side port. Cause we're going to take the clip and start it down inside of our, the compression sleeve, if you will.

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Yeah.

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Right now, you'll see the clip inside the, the sleeve or the guide.

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No, I take the plunger once again, just like with the other

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Clip, like to kind of make it flat so that the pistons pushing against the flat part of this, and then I'll use the piston to guide the clip, the rest of the way first we'll take and put the guide down inside the valve housing and right there, Double-check make sure that it is in the right position and we've done all the hard parts. So we'll follow that with putting our new ball bearing in. You can seat your, your spring back into the outlet fitting of course, remember install your new earning. If the spring doesn't want to stay inside the outlet fitting, this is another handy place to put it just a little glob of Vaseline just to keep it in position And tighten it in

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And snug it back up.

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So there we have the two harder parts of rebuilding the unloader valve. We have re replaced the seat clip and over ring for the bypass. And we've checked over our easy start valve. We've also done the outlet check valve on the pump, and now we're going to take another look at the control piston here. We have our two, we have our old control piston, which we've completely removed the, the hand wheel. Here's what your assembly of components looks like.

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Okay.

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So when we, when, when this came off the pump, it looked like, so we removed the hand wheel all the way and beneath the hand wheel, we've got a roller bearing

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Brass washer and our spring now, as I mentioned previously, the, the control piston has these jam nuts. And these jam nuts are a setting to which that is a maximum that we're going to be able to turn the hand wheel in, to apply a maximum amount of tension onto that spring. So the distance that this is set is important to how the pressure washer operates now, because this one is set. We want to use that as a guide because your new one will not be set when you get your new one. Those jam nuts may not be wound together. They'll probably be just loose, be able to adjust in my hand. So we'll take these and get about the same amount of distance

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Threads

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For both pistons.

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So now that we have, they're both set about the same spot, I'll take my wrench and snug that up, and that is a good start position. And we can do fine tune adjustments of necessary for the PR pressure performance when we fire the machine back up. But that's essentially where you want a guide adjusted to. And because the performance of the pressure washers is different between, say for instance, the 1622 and the 13 or 1122 these won't always be set in the same position for every partial washer. So don't make the mistake of thinking that this is already preset when you get it and are ready to install it in your pump. So we're going to reuse the existing piston because once again, brand new machine, we're just doing this for, for visual guidance, but that's how you set, how you preset your litter control piston. So that it's right within a fine tuning range after you start the machine back up. So to, to re-install the control piston, once you've got your jam nuts, preset As always start by hand tightening

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[Inaudible]

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Once it's threaded all the way in, we'll take our 19 millimeter wrench and snug it up.

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[Inaudible]

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I like to pull all the components out of the hand wheel before I put them on so that I know that they're not cattywampus

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[Inaudible].

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So when you go to put them back on, make sure that they're facing the right orientation, but reassemble it, like, so guide it on. And as always, whenever you're operating under full pressure, the hand wheel should be turned righty tidy until it hits that mechanical limit of those jam nuts. So the last step of the unloader service process that you will go through for routine maintenance would be to apply some Loctite to the brass jam nut or the breast limitation, not and then just torque it on it, just turn it on to the end of the STEM and stop once it's all the way on to the STEM. You're not going to do that. However, until you hook the machine up and test it, because in most cases you may want to remove this handle to make those fine-tune adjustments, to the jam nuts on the control piston.

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So make sure you are aware of that so that you don't do that step too early. So now for your fine tuning process, when you start up your pressure washer, you want to turn the unloader control wheel back and forth to see some movement on the, on the needle, on the pressure gauge. When we find that sweet spot where the handle can no longer be turned, or we find that sweet spot where no additional turns on the knob will increase the pressure on the gauge any further. That means that that's where we want to stop. So if, if you can turn it further and the pressure is no longer adjusting up, we want to back those nuts up so that the handle stops. Once we reached that maximum operating pressure, if per chance, you're not up to the, the normal operating pressure, you may have to turn it clockwise a little further in. So that's the fine tuning that you would do on the jam nuts, own the control piston, but as we're reusing the existing control person, we already know that it's good.

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So we'll take, and re-install that nut.

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So to, to wrap up the unloader valve assembly process, we're then going to pop the capital on the end of the unloader handle that, that covers up and makes it look pretty on the end. You can generally do it just with Han, just by hand. I'm gonna use a rubber mallet to

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Pop

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It on there. Careful your fingers it'll pinch it. And there we go.

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We've done full reassembly, our full rebuild of the unloader valve. Those are all the components. Once again, we've got the control piston, the bypass valve and easy start valve, as well as the outlet check valve. So we had discussed, this is the area that we want to focus. If we have pressure loss, that's complete loss of pressure, no changes when opening and closing the trigger. We're not reading anything, moving on the gauge. And also on this model, we will notice that when we release the trigger on the gun, there's no total stop at all. So make sure you check back for our additional videos in our troubleshooting series on the original Josh, remember to like, and subscribe. And this is [inaudible] USA pressure washer, perfection.