A friend/neighbor told me if I can move his tub, I can have it. I had been in it and it was nice, but he hadn't used it in the year since. He said it still ran fine.

Its a Caldera Sierran. So I lay a concrete pad, get my place wired by the electrician, get the tub out of his deck (what a nightmare), hire movers to bring it my place, get it in place. I begin filling it, and as soon as the water rises above the lowest fitting (a return line in the footwell), water POURS out the bottom.

Looks like it had frozen at one point. The wetend of the pump is completely toast for several reasons, (impeller housing had a huge crack) and the heater element is a baker-hydro thing with a supposed-to-be flat 4x4 mounting plate that was bowed outward and it was leaking out the epoxy-sealed heater leads. At least those were the leaks I could find!

This much works: The air-button control box/switches seem ok. Blower turns on/off, motor (2.0hp 56 frame) seems to run fine. The light housing looked pretty crappy with a half-torn-apart gasket so i took it out and rebedded it with silicone (that procedure is familiar since it differs little from doing thru-hull fittings on boats).

So I need a wetend and heater at a minimum. The wetend I had doesn't appear to be available any more - it was an oddball 56 frame with 1.5" in/out wetend. So it looks like I'll have to replumb a bit to make everything fit. The motor is probably as old as the tub, but still works - any reason NOT to just use and save a few $$?

My most worrisome bit is there's NOT any reasonable length of exposed PVC pipes in the equipment bay - it looks like one fitting practically butts up against the next. What do I do in this situation?

I'm kinda discouraged over the whole thing right now! I am SO looking forward to soaking... someone tell me this isn't going to just be a money pit...

Not a money pit, but an ingenuity pit.

Post some photos of this setup so I can see what you're dealing with.

That pump motor btw, is probably a c-flange motor and is pretty much unuseable unless you want to put a swimming pool pump in it.

ok here's some pics,one is the motor, disassembled with some of the pump components. The other is the control pack - its just sitting in there, not connected currently.

This tub is a little weird in that it seems to use 1.5" on the pressure side and 2.0" on the suction. At least I think its weird, maybe thats common.

It would be a BIG help if you can let me know if that motor is usable. I think the motor part itself is labelled Magnetek 1081.

Yes definitely c-flange motor. Not really useable. This whole system is an old Baker-Hydro, as well your pump is a B/H Hydron pump. Been out of biz like forever.

If it were mine and I was doing this, I'd throw everything except the blower in the dump.

Replumb it to work with something newer and easier to work with, and cheaper to maintain. Once you remove the controller box from under there, you'll have a lot more room to work with. Additionally, if it were necessary, I'd use a jig saw and cut a nice big hole around those in/out pipes on the right so I could cut off those old fittings and plumb it directly.

Thanks - how does one tell a C-flange from other types? So theres not a wet-end to fit on this?

I have a appointment with a pro on Tuesday but I wanted to educate myself a bit first. Thanks so much for your help to a newbie!

That open face with the 4 rusted looking bolts... that's called a C flange.

Most spa pumps designed for this use use what are called 'thru-bolt' motors. The pumps look like this:
http://spapartsnet.com/Spa-Pumps/Spa-and-Hot-Tub-Pumps

The motors look like this:
http://spapartsnet.com/Pump-Motors/MOFE01_556_1_1.html

C-Flange motor applications are typically like this:
http://spapartsnet.com/Spa-Pumps/PAHSP- ... 9_1_1.html