The copper tube is a primer for the discharge side. Galleymaid discontinued use of that tube many years ago due to crossover flow filling up people's holding tanks when the boat is sitting. The priming function was only a precaution for if the head was installed wrong and there is a downwards slope away from the pump in the big discharge suction line between the toilet and the pump. If that big discharge suction line in your boat is level or downwards slope towards your head pump, you can remove the copper tube and put brass NPT threaded pipe plugs in the holes.

If the seacock for the head intake is completely closed, you should not get any significant water out of that copper tube when you take it off. You'll only get a little draining from the line.

The other possibility is that somebody set your boat up with fresh water flush using the freshwater pressure side system. That will reduce head smell from marine organisms dying in the standing water in the intake tube and smelling when you first flush it after it has not been used for a long time. Normally, a freshwater flush system needs special precautions to prevent cross contamination and can use the unpressurized freshwater tank as the source.

Follow the raw water intake tube from the head pump and see where it comes from. In a 53MY there are frequently multiple seacocks in that bilge under the fwd stateroom floor. Mine has an air conditioner water supply, the raw water washdown and the fwd head, all with seacocks and strainers in there.

If your head pump was flipping the breaker, maybe it was getting stuck from things wrapped up around the stator or macerator T. If so, it may now be either completely stuck or completely burned out.

To check to see if it's stuck, first check for power at the correct terminals as mentioned above. Then if there's power but it doesn't run, get a five gallon bucket to catch the slop, rubber gloves, etc. and take off the big discharge hose that runs from the toilet to the pump :-( Then remove the 6 small bolts holding the discharge pump housing cone to the pump motor frame. You can leave for later the smaller hose and the elbow that comes out of the top of the pump. What you'll find inside that housing is the macerator T, the rubber stator and the bronze spiral rotor. The stuff that gets sucked out of the head goes past the spinning T macerator and through the space between the stator and the rotor. If you find years of fiber, string, etc. wrapped around the macerator T you can sometimes fix it by just unwrapping and cutting off what you find. If you have to take the rubber stator off, you have to unscrew the spiral rotor because the macerator T keeps the stator from coming off. You just hit the T on the top of the T with a hammer. This crushes the junk in the spaces between the threads of the rotor and the motor, and you can usually just unscrew it then. If not, yo m ay have to disassemble the other side to hold the shaft from spinning while you unscrew the rotor. The macerator T has a left hand thread and has been permanently peened to stay on the rotor, although sometimes they come off and have to be peened again.

After cleaning and probably replacing the expensive rubber stator, you can screw the sprial rotor back on by hand. The motor spins in the direction that tightens it, so it won't come off.

Reassemble in reverse order and prime it by pouring water into the toilet and waiting breifly running the pump until it develops suction. If you left that copper tube on, it'll self prime.

If you discover that the motor is burned out, remove the whole thing and send it to GalleyMaid and they'll rebuild it for you like new.

Doug Shuman