Water pump reproduction

I'll sell you mine ......

On second thought, NOPE. I won't.

I'll just poop-can it.




Won't take advantage of a fellow F-Chatter.

 

I saw that one also on ebay, but opted to have mine rebuilt. The cast iron may corrode and possibly errode faster than brass from cavitation and from particles in the coolant water. I have no idea about the holes improving performance. My water pump has the plastic impeller and it works just fine.

 

Suspect it will be the same one that Superformance sell. (And QV London use extensively).

I put one on my 328 3 years/5-6000 miles ago & its been absolutely fine.

You can't rebuild them but with the cost of the thing I'd just throw it away & buy another one if it went again, but there is no reason why it should. Much cheaper than a Ferrari pump & probably less than getting someone else to rebuild it. Probably not much more than rebuilding it yourself.

 

Good man.

The impeller on the one I have is covered in rust and has not yet been installed. The housing looks so porus you can use it for a soup strainer.

No Thanx.


A good original pump housing can be rebuilt MANY times if done correctly and carefully. And done for not much more than a song and a dance if you do it yourself. Small bearing pumps can be overbored into large bearing pumps of which there were at least two variations.

If you want it optimized by the few PROs who know how and will do that, then that will cost you a bit more and be worth every penny.

There is more to a pump than meets the eye .... as I have expensively learned.

 

Hi Mark,

No ! Outer housing diameter is not big enough.

The latest pumps on the market now have an aluminium impeller. I think, that the plastic impeller was prone to getting brittle and breaking.
The other aftermarket pumps with the cast iron impeller aren't rebuildable at all. But I think, when there's a proper amount of good anti-freeze ( with anti-corrosion ) is inside the system, the cast iron won't rust.
I went for the complicated way I rebuilt an old style seal original waterpump with large bearings and converted it to the most modern seal design.

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=328021

Best Regards

Martin

 

+1 - with proper coolant in the system there is no reason for that impeller to corrode.

 

Outer housing not big enough or, not big enough to be overborred AND safe and useable? I am pretty sure I saw it done. Being un-useable due to thin walls from "overborring" could be in doubt as you mention.

You might be right on the rust vs antifreeze. Don't know, but I'm not going to try it.



I'll just keep the pump on the shelf as a reminder to be more vigilint in my purchases. As I have relearned a few times now, Ferraris are NOT places to be blindly "saving a few bucks."

And we 3x8 owners are probably the worst as a group.

 

I have this pump on my 308. Bought it from Superformance. Only problem I had was interference with my pulley. I had to grind the fins to clear the pulley. Other than that it work just fine. I removed it after over a year of use because of another repair and she look ok. No rust. I use 50/50 coolant. The cast iron can not be worst than any cast iron block or cylinder head. JMO.

 

Good to hear (no rust).

 

I don't disagree with what you say in principle but we are not "blazing a trail" with these things, they have been around for years & if they were no good the likes of Superformance would not be selling them & QV etc would not be using them. I had mine out last year after 3 years use & there was no signs of any corrosion in it (or leaks etc) either.

 

we are returning to the eternal subject ' spare parts quality '. Concerning the waterpumps I would say, that the cheaper one with the cast iron impeller is still the better one. Except, that it's not rebuildable.
But I have seen the ones with the plastic impeller. I had one and I would never install it. First, the impeller is made of plastic. It needs a lot of heat cycles but eventually the plastic can get brittle enough. And I'm not keen on searching for plastic debris inside my coolant system with the big chance, that I will never find all of the parts.
Secondly, the impeller showed a lot of axial runout visible to the naked eye. Ferrari specifies a required gap dimension between impeller and thermostat housing. You can find this in the WSM. And then some aftermarket manufacturer comes with such a bad manufactured impeller. Bad Joke !!

There must be a reason, that the impellers on those pumps are now made of aluminium.

http://www.superformance.co.uk/a-308/cooling.htm

And Mark; sorry, but overboring a small housing to accept the big bearings, is the same botch. The wall will simply gets too thin and doesn't bear the radial load permanently.
If I had to choose, I would personally prefer a failing impeller, shaft, bearing or seal, or whatever, against a housing which fails / fractures near the bearing seats while revving 7000 1/min.
Like - IIRC - rifledriver once stated; the early small bearing housings are just worth scrapping.

Best Regards

Martin

 

Cant think of any advantage of aluminium over cast iron. Cast iron impellers have been used on water pumps for ever and they dont rust assuming proper antifreeze.

One advantage of cast iron is you can remove the impeller to rebuild the pump by splitting it apart using a cold chisel and hammer. Standard rebuild practice.

 

When you look onto the Superformance offer, you see, that there are two versions.
I talked about those waterpumps with the plastic impeller and compared plastic with aluminium, not cast iron with aluminium. The cheap cast impeller waterpump is still available. The more expensive waterpump with the now aluminium impeller had a plastic impeller until now and all the problems I described in my previous post.

And if you remove the cast impeller using a chisel and hammer. From where do you get a new one ?

Best Regards

Martin

 

Thats an extremely good question

And not an easy one to answer I have to admit!

Generally water pump repair kits would include bearing, seal and impeller but no such kit seems to be available in this case. No doubt they are standard parts as used on many engines but would need matching up.

 

At £95+VAT these pumps are pretty much disposable items

 

Why not go with an electric water pump? No belt, no real problems, plenty of coolant moving when you need it and you can thermostatically control when it kicks on.

Just curious..

Lester

 

maybe an option for some, who want to modernize a 40+years old design.
No option for people like me, who regard their 308s as classic cars.
Small modifications, which are not immediately noticable by the naked eye... o.k.
But an electric waterpump would go too far for me.
And probably for the administration. In two weeks my 308 GTB will get the german 'H-registration'. H for historic. ( manufactured '80, but first registered May 82 ). And with extensive modernizations my car would fail the H-examination.
BTW; I cannot understand those, who permanently compare the 3x8 cars with modern stuff. I always laugh about discussions like ' 328 laptimes on the Nurburgring Nordschleife ' ))
If I would wish a most modern design with max. performance I would go for something appropriate. Like for instance a Nissan GT-R.
My 308 GTB is a classic car. Nevertheless I want reliability. And reliability is based on quality spare parts.
It represents the general situation, that we have to discuss waterpumps.
Why not simply build an original design waterpump matching the latest seal and impeller design with most modern manufacturing methods ? Too expensive ? This makes me shake my head.

Best Regards from Germany

Martin

 

Well, I'll only be able to tell you if the Italians succeeded with that in about 10 years I guess

But so far so good - 4 years on and I have no problems with the aftermarket pump.

 

Perhaps you folks have forgotten that Nick has been selling a redesigned coolant pump for several years.

These pumps incorporate a curved vane hard anodized impeller, updated seals, larger shaft and bearings than the original Ferrari design. Nick's pumps include a much lighter hard anodized aluminum pulley to replace the heavy original Ferrari cast iron piece.

I had these pumps built for Nick to improve coolant flow for larger displacement engines I sleeve the blocks for. Nicks pumps are an excellent updated replacement pump for any 308 - 328 Ferrari.

Steve
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The pulley on my 328 is Ally.

No disresepect to the engineering - but is that necessary for a standard engine? AFIAK those things cost significantly more than a standard pump (and therefore a huge amount more than the Italian pattern part). I took my car across Europe last summer with a pattern part pump in it - long runs down motorways in 30+ degree heat , sat in a few traffic jams & then up & down some of the big mountain roads, again in very warm weather. No problems with cooling at all. QV send 308s & 328s out racing with the same pump on them. Experience suggests its just not necessary to try & do anything clever in this area unless maybe you were dealing with a huge amount of power.

The big issue with the standard pumps seems to be the bearing size (especially the early ones). I don't know how big the bearings in the pattern pumps are by comparison but I'll see if I can find out.

 

they dimensions match the size of the late style, big bearing Ferrari pumps.
The other question is; do they match the bearing play of the original pumps ?
Due to the high temperatures the bearings need the classification C3 ( increased bearing play compared to standard ).
Standard bearings ( without any Cx ) also work, but lifetime is shortened.


Best Regards from Germany

Martin

 

No idea Martin, but to put the thing in context, the pump costs less than a pair of Hills Tensioner bearings, less than half the price of a set of ignition leads & about the same as a tank of fuel these days (For the benefit of our American friends, Super is now near enough $8.75/US Gallon equivalent in Europe )


When I next do my belts in 2 years time it will be 6 years old - maybe I'll just throw it away & replace it anyway!

 

What's the designed lifetime between rebuilds on these pumps and do you have any long-term real world data on them? While I'm not needing one now, some day I might just move up to this even though the initial expense is higher.

 

I got mine.
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