Water Pump Packing

[hursst]

Hello,
   I have a '30 30U with a water pump.  I had the pump rebuilt a couple years ago and it worked okay; a few drips here and there.  I recently went on a 400-mile your with it, and now it's leaking quite a lot.  It looks like it needs new packing.

   I've never messed with packing before, but it appears that the rebuilder put in a rubber seal in the packing nut and there was no packing material in addition to this. I believe I overtightened the nut a little trying to stop the original few drips, so I probably ruined the rubber seal.

   My question to the group would be, should I leave the rubber seal in place and put packing on top of that (there is still some room within the packing nut), or should I remove the rubber seal and just go with the regular packing material?

Thanks for any responses!

[racertb]

Are you able to just replace the seal?  I'm not sure, but can you use a seal with some packing material?  I don't have a water pump on mine, so I'm guessing here.

[hursst]

The rubber seal was installed when the shaft was out, so I'd have to cut the rubber seal off to remove it and could not instal another one without taking the shaft out (a LOT of work to do that).