water pump mod

[mcart]

Thought I would post a modification to a new water pump I did while gathering parts and saving up for a low budget poor man's stroker build up. After reviewing some similar mods on this site and others prompted me to try it myself. The disc is made from aircraft quality stainless steel .025 thick and riveted to the impeller using countersunk stainless steel solid rivets. I believe this method is similar to kits sold by flowkooler for the SBC crowd. I also feathered the leading edge of the impeller blades using a dremel tool and small hand files. I was wondering if anyone has ever found a slightly smaller diameter pulley that could installed to slightly speed up the water pump similar to smaller pulleys used on power steering pumps. I was thinking that the slightly higher RPM would flow more water at idle.

[beiwulf]

Interesting mod you did, and yes the second I saw it thought of the Flowkooler setup. They did this I believe to help with the cavitation (solid back piece on blades). I do not have a pulley suggestion for you but sure there is one out there. Thanks for sharing the mod… Keep us posted.

Brian

[SilverXJ]

Nice work. I haven't seen a smaller pulley available. However, having one fabricated shouldn't be too had as it isn't ribbed.

Flowkooler actually changed their design sometime ago. They use to use the plate riveted to the impeller. Now use a billet impeller similar to Hesco's pump.

[mcart]

update, after a short walk thru my local pick-a-part, I found that a 8 dollar 99 Chevy Lumina v6 waterpump pulley to be a good fit on a jeep waterpump. the bolt pattern is exact. This pulley measures 5.30 diameter where the stock pulley measures 5.41 diameter. After doing the math, it revealed that the lumina pulley turns faster by a whopping 25 RPM's .... okay maybe not ready for king of Hammers but I believe at lower crawl RPM's could not hurt to have even a little more flow. The Lumina pulley is wider than the stock one so needed to be narrowed by .187. I used a an old lathe at work to cut off the edge, was not too difficult, we used a shaft removed from an used waterpump core to chuck up in the lathe. If I were to do it again, I would try using a cut off wheel instead of a cutter. The pics show the Lumina pulley installed after the cut showing no interference with pump housing.

[beiwulf]

standing by for more...