Summary Build quality/fit and finish: excellent Performance in combat: TBD Overall rating: 9/10 Details The Battlers Connection micro bilge pump is a well-designed and built bilge pump that appears perfectly suited for the smallest of model warship combat vessels for both big or fast gun combat formats. The pump comes with a small square of plastic screen to prevent debris from fouling the pump, clear plastic discharge tubing, a sheet of instructions, an alternate motor mounting top plate, and both 1/8" and 3/32" brass restrictors. Use of a lightweight polymer for the main body of the pump keeps the weight to a minimum while limiting the quantity of components prone to developing rust. While the overall center of gravity of the pump is higher than I would prefer, its location is due to the use of a vertical shaft, horizontal discharge orientation, the same as with all other bilge pump designs I have seen in use for model warship combat. The inclusion of a pair of grooves in the side of each of the portions of the pump housing ensures consistent alignment of the individual components should the pump require disassembly and reassembly. Areas in which this product could be further improved above and beyond the existing high quality design would be the use of exclusively stainless hardware, molded-in tabs to facilitate pump mounting, and a short length of pre-cut tube to serve as a deck or hull pass-through for the pump outlet. All these features and attributes considered, the product warrants a solid 9/10 overall rating.
IMHO I don't think you can go wrong with Battler's Connection. Everything that I ever purchased from them has been top quality. Have you had a chance to test how much water the pump puts out in 1 minute? Thanks,
Hey Webwookie, did you use the stock motor that BC provides? What are the power stats on the motor that you're using? Oh yes, congrats on the first product review in the product reviews section!
I plan upon using it with the stock motor. Although I haven't properly flow-tested/measured it (all I've done is dunk it into water in the kitchen sink), I'm confident that it should achieve an appropriate flow rate.
I'm definately interested in finding out what sort of stock flow rate it puts out. I'm thinking about getting a few to stick in my Treaty cruisers.
Don’t want to hijack this topic but on a similar note I had BC small pump in my Cruiser and it couldn’t keep me afloat. Bought a pump from Carl and once I got it working right never sunk again the small BC pump didn’t hold a candle to it so for a cruiser I would go with a large BC or get one from Carl and find the weight some where ells if that is why you want to go micro
The BC Mirco pumps are meant to go into DDs or very small CLs. The large pump with a cruiser motor is best for a heavy cruiser. A large pump with a large high speed motor is best for the Des Moines. I have an old Carl Camradi (SP?) cruiser size pump. I put the same cruiser motor as my large BC pump. They had the same output, about 1 gal/min.
For treaty in my cruiser I can't have more then .75 gpm, which is why the micro pump looks attractive to me.
Okay I'll save this one for some other project. glad I decided to hold off on the second hull until one was done and buy two pumps.
Monk's got the right of it. To the best of my knowledge, Carl makes just about the best pumps in the business. If you can get one, I'd go that route if you can. They have the added advantage of being a little bit smaller then a BC pump so they fit in smaller ships a lot better. I've also heard rumors that some of the guys down in region three MWC have made some pretty killer pump outlets that are very high efficiency designs. I've heard they can pump about 4 gallons per minute with those outlets. I've never seen one, only heard about them, so I dont know for sure. It's probably worth your time to at least look into it though!
That definately sounds possible. I was doing some CFD sims of pump outlets and with a fixed pressure drop could go from as little as 1gmp up to over 2 gpm just by tweaking the inlet/outlet geometry of the orifice.
