Replacing the Air Pump

A new air pump …

The replacement of a Keurig air pump is sometimes required when you end up with a regular partial cup of coffee. Included in this is when you have nothing or little coffee produced, however when you take out the K-Cup from the holder the brewer will produce a normal cup – well, you end up lovely cup of hot water.

Set out are 14 easy to follow steps to get the pump replaced (don’t worry, we really break the process down and so it looks a lot more than steps than actual work to do). We are using our B60 for the demonstration, but the steps, parts, system logic are very similar if not the same for most Keurig models.

Just as a note: if you haven’t tried already you might want to have a go at the Keurig Burp for the air pump. This might just get it back to life without going through the steps below.

Parts and Equipment Required

The equipment list below excludes what you need for Step 1, ie removing the outer casing of the brewer. Please refer to our separate comprehensive guide for this process by following this link, where you will find a specific list of tools for this more complex process.

Parts

One new or reconditioned air pump. We personally always like to go for a new part, in particular with Keurig pumps, as you just don’t know how many cycles they have been through nor any damaged sustained. The pump in the photo below can be purchased through Amazon.com and at the time of writing this guide it costs $17.95 with free postage.

Do make sure the pump you are buying comes with the main circuit board connector with its red and black wires, as you can see in the photo below; in addition, the mid-section metal supporting bracket.

Equipment

For the replacement of the air pump itself you will only need:

• Phillips head screw driver.

Steps to Follow

Step 1

The first and most difficult part of the process is removing the outer casing; this is what puts most people off repairing their Keurig brewer. But if you willing to have a go and save yourself the cost of a new brewer, we can help. Check out our guide in removing the casing, and once this is done move onto step 2.

This part of the process does the most amount of time and requires the most amount of patience. So once you are through it you are onto easy street with the rest of the steps being very straight forward.

Step 2

Remove the plastic protective covering to the main circuit board. As you can see from the photo there are number of screws, but you need to only remove 3. The top screw on the right, the mid-section screw directly below it and then there is a tricky little one right at the button, that sits below the transformer. One these three screws are removed you should be able to lift the cover off and let it open up, as if hinged on its right side.

Step 3

Now that you have access to the brewer’s power board you want to remove the power connection to the air pump. In the photo you can see which one you need to disconnect. Its a white connector with a black and a red wire coming from it. You can use pliers for this process, but I prefer to use my fingers and you can get a better feel in the pressure being applied and so not to damage the connection with the board. But if you need pliers, a small pair of needle nose ones would do it.

Step 4

With the pump disconnected from the power board you can feed the wires through the mass of other wires to bring it across to the other side, where the air pump is housed. It looks a rather daunting process to start with, but the wires are generally laid so once you find the correct red and black paring they should feed come through without much trouble.

Step 5

Removing the pump from its mount is the next step. As you can see the air pump is held on by one screw, through its middle metal bracket. Using your Phillips head screw driver take this screw out and then gently pull it from the housing so it is free.

Step 6

Disconnecting the air pump output tubing is the next step. As you can see in the photo below it is secured by a plastic tie, but you don’t need to cut this but rather just work it down from the output connection until it becomes loose – as you can see in the second photo. Then you can slowly remove the tubing from the connector until it is free. Hang onto that plastic tie clip collar as we can use this on the new pump you are about to put on – this saves you the hassle of attaching a new tie.

Step 7

The pump should only be connected to the brewer by its red and black wires. We now need to thread these through the last part of the machine and so free it from the brewer. Its a little fiddly this last part, as you have to work past the solenoid unit and then feed the wires out of the small gap they slip through onto the air pump.

Step 8

With the pump removed its time to attach the new one (as you can tell from the photo we just put the old one back on as there was nothing wrong with the brewer’s air pump). It’s best to go in reverse order with feeding the red and black wires through first and then re-attach the air tubing, keep the small plastic tie clip collar that you removed earlier.

Step 10

Connect the new pump to the air pressure tubing with the tube going onto the connector first and then bringing the plastic tie collar back over the connector to ensure a nice tight fit.

Placing these ties back on with a nice snug fit is important in ensuring a good seal back onto the pump and so the proper delivery of air pressure to the boiler unit.

Step 11

Place the pump back into its cradle and attach by putting the bracket screw back in, that you had removed in Step 5.

Step 12

With the pump securely attached back to the brewer structure its time to thread the wires back through to the other side of the machine and feed down to the power board for re-attachment.

Step 13

At this point you can be brave and go back and place all of the outer casing etc back on and test your handy work. However what we recommend is lets do the testing now just to make sure this did solve the problem. But a few things we have to do first.

Make sure the air tubes are all connected correctly with the plastic ties in place. If they are providing a good tight fit, detach them and clip on a new tie.

The second very important step is to ensure we re-earth the metal base plate. So connect up the three earthing wires and make sure they are properly connected and are not in contact with any other wires or parts.

Step 14

Now we have the safety steps done and ensured the pump is properly in place, plug the brewer back in and run through a normal brew cycle, with a K-Cup in the holder, as you would normally.