The eBay seller was nice enough to give me a partial refund to cover the cost of the full rebuild kit, which is arriving tomorrow. Over the next few days I will be posting the rebuild of the pump to this thread. So who's ready for an Edwards E2M series vacuum pump teardown! 
Started to do some disassembly while I wait for the parts to arrive. First thing was taking off the side cover plates to get a look at the motor coupling side. Immediately looks like some fine rubber dust caked inside, suspect some sort of rubber component is worn down.
Unbolting the four bolts in each corner on the motor side plate, the motor assembly can be removed. Here we see the coupling to turn the pump shaft. Motor spins very freely, easy, and smooth by hand, no issues here. Some black stuff caked in here and there to be cleaned.
Turning to the shaft coupling on the pump side, some immediate issues. The rubber shaft coupling insert is destroyed. Probably explains why the motor was running louder than expected! Also explains all the fine rubber dust inside. Definitely needs cleaning and replacement!
What. What the hell. The inlet is completely missing the o-ring seal! And the inlet filter is completely gone too! What ass hat does this?! No wonder I can't pull down or maintain vacuum, there is no seal between the KF25 inlet and the body! That explains a lot!
The gas ballast filter has also been removed and replaced with an external purge adapter. I think the overhaul kit should have a replacement filter so hopefully I can just add that back to the assembly since I won't be using an external gas source for the ballast.
Checking the exhaust outlet side, looks like the o-ring is there and in-tact. Since I am tearing down the whole pump anyway, I might as well do a thorough cleaning and replace everything since this pump has definitely not been serviced for a long time, if at all.
Continuing briefly with the outlet portion of the pump, I just got in the EMF20 oil mist filter I ordered from eBay. Used, but the seller fully cleaned and prepped it. This thing is huge, wasn't expecting it to be so massive! Definitely needed though to trap exhaust vapors.
The rebuild kit is in! It's go time! Day two of the E2M18 has officially begun!
Working on the four corner bolts now on the pumping side to get into the actual area where the vacuum magic happens
Casing is off. This is going to take a lot of cleaning!
First piece is off, exposing one of the vane stages. The inside seems much cleaner than the outside, which has black crud caked all over it. I'm going to have to run out to get more mineral spirits and some brushes and pails to really scrub this down.
After a quick trip to the store for more cleaning supplies, I moved my cleaning operations outside. Got a lot of scrubbing to do!
First two pieces are scrubbed and ready to go! The outsides are just covered in thick black old oil. On to the main piece!
Removing a few cover pieces now, getting ready to take apart the rotary vane stage.
Pieces are cleaned, with new seals installed. On to the main attraction, the rotary vane stages!
Having difficulty seperating the rotary vane casing halves, so I decided to take off a few more pieces on the body for cleaning. The oil filter is completely trash, good thing the kit has a spare. Gotta clean these up and put in new o-rings here.
And the parts are cleaned, new gaskets fit, and ready to go! Really glad the kit included a spare filter, it would have been impossible to clean!
Managed to get the two halves of the rotary vane casing seperated. And it's still stuck... Going to try to remove the first stage from the outer casing block and try to work from there. I have a feeling it is gunked up inside the vanes and causing sticking.
Nope, that was not the right step. Tightening this side back up, just gotta slowly inch the two haves around the secondary apart and try to unstick everything.
Finally, some progress! Pried off the motor coupler from the atmospheric side. Lots of crap on this side too causing a lot of sticking. Fortunately now I should be able to pull off the whole shaft assembly from the vacuum side.
Success! Now to finally try and get to the vanes!
Up early for day 3 of the pump rebuild. Just finished cleaning the inlet and ballast casing as well as the motor coupler. New seals installed, these pieces are ready to go!
Popping off the first shaft deal cover, it's clear things are bad in here. Black sludge all around the shaft seal, this definitely needs replacing.
This is utter hell. Hammering away at the case to slowly seperate the stages. It is so unbelievably stuck I'm worried I'm destroying something in the process.
Ok then. All the hammering finally knocked loose a stuck shaft seal, exposing a shaft pin to slide out the primary state from the casing. Time to clean this up, then work on the stuck secondary stage.
Finally, the stage is clean. Took forever with all the tarred crap on the outside, and all of the shaft seals were fused inside the casing, so I had to carefully chisel them out. On to the next piece.
It's finally out. Almost an hour of hammering, and half a can of PB Blaster, and the damn thing is finally seperated.
Clean and ready to go! I think I'm about set to start putting this back together!
Putting the new first stage vanes in.
The hell is never fucking ending. Because of the hammering on the shaft the secondary blades don't fit. I have to now sand them by hand. I really just want to give up at this point, it's not worth it.
