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russ
    05/07/08 at 10:14 PM
 Reply with quote#1

You can rebuild any water pump, but can you make it perform better?  A company upgrades the water pump to a 63 cadillac by riveting a round metal disk to the water vanes. They say it increases low speed water flow. The rivets rub into the timing chain cover, so an aditional gasket must be used to space out the water pump.  Can you do the same results without the need for aditional gaskets? 
Howard
    05/09/08 at 03:07 PM
 Reply with quote#2
Russ,

It's hard to believe those guys are still at it.

Installing the disk on the back of a stamped steel impeller will increase the low speed flow IF there is excessive clearance between the back of the impeller and the back cover or timing cover. The fact that the pop rivet heads rub would indicate that there isn't excessive clearance.

I'm pretty sure your pump had a cast iron impeller orginally.

If you have the original pump with the orginal impeller, we can restore it to new condition and set the clearances correctly. This will yield flow at least equal to the best OEM pumps of the era. The OEM pumps had adequate flow....most replacement and rebuilt pumps flow less.

You can fix the problem with the rivet heads by just drilling them out and tossing the magic disk. If the timing cover surface isn't flat in the area of the impeller...keep the disk, but drill the rivets out and weld it to the impeller.

Howard Stewart
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