Shoot! That was it? I thought mine was shot when I got my Westy last
year... so I went ahead and bought a submersible, bore a hole in the 
plastic cover to route the wires, hooked up the wires to the on-off
switch, and now when I turn the water on, a steady stream of water
comes out (was the original switch able to vary the flow of water
anyway?). It was a lot of pain to get this done. Now I don't even
want to rewire the old pump to see whether it work. Major bummer!

So I'll "sour grape" on the thing and say that the old pump must have been
shot anyway.   :-(

(Too late for me to have found this conference...)