I have an old well in the California Desert. It was drilled in 1960 and has an 8" steel casing. The pump was 3hp 220v 3 wire Franklin. The pump pumped a lot of water and air until it stopped pumping recently. The pump was still running but no water. It still pressurized the pipe with a little air pressure but no or very little water. I called out a well guy, told him the history and he thought the pipe probably had a hole in it. We pulled the pump. The pipe below the water was in bad shape and there was at least one hole in it. We sent a camera down and the casing above the water level looked ok, but not so good below. He advised replacing at least the below water line pipe and suggested replacing all of it with schd 120 ridged PVC. He also suggested a new smaller 1 1/2HP pump and thought putting a new 4 1/2" pvc schd 40 liner to protect the well from possible collapsing. I'm a retired pipefitter and figured do it all now, so we did. The new pump is pumping a lot of water but after a few minutes starts to pump air, THEN SHUTS OFF, then comes back on, runs a little then off again. He thought that maybe it was a capacitor going bad in the new control box and he switched the whole box for another. We checked all connections in the box, all good. We checked the power before and after the control box, it was all good. But the pump continues to turn off and on. He's guessing that the pump may have some kind of safety built in that trips it when it's not fully in the water. He wants to drop the pump down another 10 feet. Says he's never seen this before without a pump protector. He's going to contact the pump manufacturer. Static level of water is 150' bottom is 196'. 180 feet of down pipe now. If the 10 extra feet doesn't do it, they maybe a smaller pump? What do you guys think?