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In today’s market, many shops are advertising vertical turbine pump repair—but very few actually have the capabilities to do it correctly. The unfortunate reality is that many of these shops are just parts changers. They’ll press out worn bushings, push in bushings, cut new wear ring fits, replace shafts, and call it a “repair.”

The problem is that this approach completely misses the bigger picture. Most vertical turbine pumps don’t fail simply because a part wore out. They fail because of underlying issues in alignment, machining, and critical dimensional checks that go unaddressed.

To properly repair a vertical turbine pump, a shop must first have the capabilities—the right machines, the right measurement tools, and the right handling equipment. This includes:

• Precision machine work on heads, column piping, and bowl assemblies.
• Concentricity checks from the motor fit on the pump head all the way down to the suction bearing.
• Parallelism verification across critical components to ensure shafts, bearings, and columns are properly aligned.
• Dynamic balancing capacity to make sure rotating assemblies are balanced as a whole, not just in parts.
• Overhead crane capacity under roof to safely handle, assemble, and disassemble large pumps for inspection and repair.

If you’re not verifying concentricity, parallelism, and balance of the rotating assembly—and if you don’t even have the ability to lift, assemble, and test these massive pumps under one roof—you’re not doing vertical turbine pump repair correctly.

Here’s the truth: most shops don’t even own the VTL lathes, the balancing equipment, or the overhead crane capacity needed for this work. Without these tools, they can’t properly machine large assemblies, disassemble for inspection, or reassemble for a complete teardown and test.

This is why many pumps “repaired” in these shops end up back in the field with the same problems—or worse—because the root causes were never addressed.

It’s crazy to see these so-called pump shops winning contracts for vertical turbine pump repair when they have zero capability to actually perform the work themselves. Everything they pull out of the pump has to be sent to a third party for machining, balancing, or even basic inspections. When a shop can’t handle the disassembly, inspections, machining, balancing of the rotating assembly, and reassembly under one roof, they aren’t truly repairing your pump—they’re just managing paperwork while someone else does the real work. This creates risk, delays, and cost for the end user.

For operators, municipalities, power plants, and industries depending on vertical turbine pumps, downtime is costly. A repair that only replaces parts without addressing fundamental alignment, balance, and handling requirements is not a repair at all—it’s a temporary patch.

At shops JetTech Mechanical LLC utilizes for our pump repairs, we utilize and recommend shops around doing this work the right way. With the machines, the balancing capacity, the cranes, and the skilled people in place, we don’t just change parts—we solve the problems that cause pump failure in the first place.

If you’re trusting a shop with your vertical turbine pumps, ask them:

• Do you have the equipment to check concentricity, parallelism, and balance across the entire pump assembly?
• Can you disassemble, inspect, and reassemble the pump under one roof?
• Do you have the crane and machining capacity to handle large vertical turbines?
• Can you balance the rotating assembly as well?
• Or are you just replacing parts?

Because at the end of the day, not all pump repair shops are created equal.

Thank you Brian Franks with JetTech Mechanical LLC for sharing this informative article with us! 

Laser Alignment for a Vertical Water Pump with Easy-Laser XT