Water Pump Bearings

Modern units use carbon-faced or ceramic-faced seals with a bearing assembly that consists of a spindle and a long bearing, all one piece.

You may find a bearing with the seals integrated (SKF used to have them in their catalogue) but I feel that a water pump would need the specialist seal that would stand the running temperatures and also you have to think of the heat soak thermal stresses when the engine stops after a hard drive.

Possibly get a new pump and strip it for spares that you can use? I don't think that water pump parts are available from the major manufacturers, but Quinton Hazell might still have some stocks of the older kits.

HTH

Peter PS: 5-pin socket should be in Monday :-))

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Charles Ping asked ..........

Charles,

I do not know the direct answer to your question but might it be one of lubrication, and not tearing up the somewhat delicate leading edge of the neoprene (or whatever ?) material from which these seals are made.

May I suggest a bit of lateral thinking and suggest a look at washing machine technology. In my experience - or rather that of 'er ou washes my socks - the pumps on these machines cope with fairly cruddy, emulsified, dirty hot water with rarely a complaint.

I have never stripped one down so I am really talking out of the back of my head - but it might be worth a look. There are plenty of them down at the local tip to experiment with.

Is this for the Seven? Have you seen the electric conversion that is available in Oz? The pump switches in and out rather like a Kenlowe fan, so is quite efficient at maintaining a constant temperature.

Mike

ps How goes the blower?

You don't give any indication of what sort of diameters are involved, but one waterpump overhaul kit that is available is for the Ford 1600 crossflow/Lotus twincam engine.

These have a sealed (greased) bearing assembly which has a double ended shaft and comes with a spring loaded ceramic disk cartridge and carbon disk seal.

The shaft is about 12mm diameter.

Ian Phillips

Jabsco and Johnson water pumps, the ones with flexible neoprene or similar impellers, often do have lip seals on stainless shafts. They do tend to wear the shaft more than in an oily environment (no surprise there), they should be assembled with a bit of grease around the seal area but I have my doubts as to how long that lasts. The seals may be a special compound, I did replace one once with a standard (oil) lip seal & it lasted about 6 months in daily use.

Cheers Tim

Tim Leech Dutton Dry-Dock

Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs

Charles, You are looking for an animal called a Mechanical Seal. To give you an idea look at

for part number 288-8868 A lot of water pumps have these built into a long bearing assembly. Best bet cost wise is to try an autojumble and see if you can't pick a couple of repair kits up for older type pumps. The Ford commercials were always a press fit. Be very wary of getting a diecast alloy pump to remove the spindle as they machine a groove in the bearing housing and cast the body round this so it's impossible to remove. Correction you can remove it but you can't reuse it

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Mike may onto something here. Oil pumps tend to be positive displacement pumps operating at relatively high pressure with a clean fluid and hence need a good seal; whereas water pumps tend to be of the centrifugal type giving high flows at low pressure operating with a sometimes dirty fluid so a graphite or ceramic seal would be better suited.

Cliff.

Thanks for the pointers chaps - Yes it is for the Austin but it has to fit in the blower drive/timing case, so the Aus electric pump isn't an option. I too was concerned that a lip seal might not get adequate lubrication from mere hot water! The compostite answer is to get a suitable pump/parts and cannibalise/adapt - I quite like the Lotus twin cam replacement idea (which probably fits in with John's "Ford Commercial" suggestion.)

I can see an interesting hour troubling my local motor factor coming up....

regards

Charles

"Somewhere" I have a bearing/shaft assy. new and unused SKF, but no seal. I will attempt to have a dig for it during the week, but it hasn't been seen for a month or so, when I was looking for something else.

Isn't it always the case? When you're not looking for something it always turns up, but as soon as you need the bl**dy thing you can't find it for love nor money!!

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Charles, If it's for the Austin have you tried my neighbour, John Barlow? He runs the A7 spares are at least he gets a lot made.

0115 922 4926

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

When I built my twin cam lotus I got a special front cover that took a water pump capsule. I had to remove and replace the bearing before I used it, and would expect you could buy this as a spare. I have scrawled down SKF 395700B on my paperwork, this might be worth investigating with a bearing supplier like bearing services. Alternatively the cover was supplied to me by A.K.S. in Trawden, Tel 0282

867 087.

-- Jonathan

Barnes's theorem; for every foolproof device there is a fool greater than the proof.

To reply remove AT

Thanks Jonathan - I had a look in the Burton Catalogue and they list a modified front cover and modern seal kit so that's probably the way to go.

Thanks

Charles

"

Paul Matty list two Twincam waterpump kits. One is Lotus branded at £42.95 and the other branded 'Alternative!' is £12.50 I would think they are more affordable than the Burton power kit.

As far as I remember I think the Lotus sourced kit includes the impellor and some other parts that you might not need anyway.

Ian Phillips

PS. What is your twincam in Jonathan?

Lateral thinking... What are the pros and cons of putting some emulsified oil (AKA suds) in engine cooling water?

Mark Rand RTFM

FROTH

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Has been done many times, it was a well known "fix" for squeaking water pumps -though perhaps more from the "Arthur Daily" end of the trade. In fact someone at work was mentioning doing this to cure a squeaky water pump just the other day. Don't know if it is still valid on more modern cars.

Regards

Kevin

Not entirely true, for many years Scania recommended soluble oil in their engine cooling systems, only changing over to other corrosion preventatives when something better came along.

We were putting it in during '71 to '75.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Well.... It's a 1628cc; take an early XR2 fiesta cylinder block, bored +30, a big valve lotus head, AKS front cover, and specialy ground kent cams, then bolt on Webber 45 carbs, and get a special exaust to go under the sump so it exausts out the back when you bolt it to a ford gearbox with an XR3 Escort diferential and a fiesta 1100 5 speed gear cluster, and stuff it into the back of a Davrian Mk 8 Kit car.

FUN !

Jonathan

Barnes's theorem; for every foolproof device there is a fool greater than the proof.

To reply remove AT

Sound good! and I've learned too from your engine description that the block from a transverse engined Ford fits a Twincam.

Ian Phillips