Thread: Water Pump Gasket Sealer

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Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

There is your problem, Roger, you are overdriving that pump by having a smaller pulley on it. That was my problem too. The correct pulleys were discontinued by Ford Racing but Runne Rite used to make them for Ford and still carries them. Once I ordered the right ones it was VERY apparent I was killing the pumps myself by having the wrong pulleys on them.

In the picture below the pulleys on the left are the wrong Zoops pulleys I had on it. The ones on the right are the correct Runne Rite pulleys, You can see how overdriven it was, and yours is similar. You will never keep any gasket in that pump with that overdriven condition..............I had to learn the hard way, about $ 1500 dollars worth of screw ups later, if you factor in 3 pumps, two sets of pulleys, U Haul truck and trailer to bring my car back from Daytona, etc. But it is finally working great after I got the right pulleys.

Also, I don't know if you can see on Don's car (blue one) but the stock Ford wp pulley is huge compared to the crank pulley, slowing it down even more.

Don

BTW, here is Runne Rites website: (Oh, and all of those pulleys shown are billet aluminum, they just photographed black for some reason.....reflection?)

Pulley Kits

Don,
I'll definitely keep that in mind and will keep that RunneRite link in my back pocket, but in my case I think I found the culprit in a bolt not being torqued to spec at a critical point, leaking around one of the pump ports on the plate to block surface. With the Street Drive unit three critical points at the water ports are threaded billet spacers that must first be tightened on the pump, then the outer bracket tightened to that spacer. One of mine was not tight at the pump.
I've finally seen that on this pump all around the back plate to pump is a critical seal; but on the pump back plate to block the critical point is only around the two water ports into the block. There's a weep hole relief at the bottom of the raised sealing surface on the front cover, and any coolant that gets out from the pump inlet/outlet seal area drips from that weep relief. The pump to block seal could just as easily (and maybe more effectively) be a pair of O-rings at the ports, with nothing around the rest of the pump, but it is critical that the entire surface be equally tightened to seal the plate to pump surface.
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You can see here that mine shows evidence of port leakage from both stains on the pump and the front cover, but the weep hole at the bottom was totally blocked with RTV so it held for a while. Also interesting to me is that if you look at the front cover there are three holes around each of the ports (inner ones still have blue RTV in them), but on this pump only the two outside perimeter holes are used on each side, leaving the inner load around both ports to be picked up by other perimeter bolts. It would be a much better pump design to have two more bolts at the ports, but we live with what the OEM designer gave us....
Like I said, a pair of RunneRite pulleys may still be in my future, but I think I'll pull the back cover, inspect the impeller, and if OK install the back cover being sure it is sealed 100%, then reinstall the pump and the rest of the junk. Can't check for leaks until the radiator is re-mounted and buttoned up