V-8 conversions., Water pump problems. Options

[itsav8]

:toilet: Is anyone else out there with a Renegade kit having as much trouble as I am keeping their water pump from grenading? I have gone through 2 in 2000
miles- the impeller just folds over on its self. Thanks in advance for any input.

[Pompano Beach 914V8]

The reply by Sammy was very "on point" and this may very well solve your problem.

If it doesn't you might be interested in how I solved the cooling on my 914 conversion. I will spell it out below but, suffice it to say that it has worked beautifully.
The car can idle all day with the A/C on and the electric fans just cycle on and off to control the temp.

I live in South Florida and when I was considering a V8 conversion I was very concerned about the cooling system. I knew that I wanted total dependability and A/C.

I may be wrong here but I thought that the renegade conversion used a belt-driven boat style water pump. After talking with a lot of boaters down here in the Fort Luaderdale area they were very sceptical about using this system to do an automobile conversion. I started looking around on the web and found that a lot of Pantera guys were using the Evans Cooling System to address their cooling problems. I will post a link to the Evans site below but, suffice it to say, this system is what I used and it is rock-solid dependable so-far.

This system addresses several things that are real problems where a water based system is used. I wanted a high compression engine and one of the problems with a high compression chevy is nucleate boiling in the heads. The water actually boils at the surface of the water jackets in the head and temperature spikes to very high levels because this boiling insulates the water jacket surface from the cooling medium (water) by the gases from the boiling. The only way to even partially overcome this is by using a high pressure cooling system that is very hard on hoses and water pumps (not good with a mid-engined set-up where these components are already highly stressed).

The Evans system is a non-water system that has a MUCH higher boiling point. Water is actually a contaminate in this system and should be completely flushed out.

I used an Evans "water" pump that is modified for a higher flow and has a Chevy "short water pump". In order to have the pump and firewall not interfere with each other I cut a hole in the firewall that is about 11" by about 9" and welded a bowl shaped cover over it ( the interior fits right over this). This gives ample room for a standard style water pump set-up.

The tech guys at Evans gave me their suggestions on installing bleed lines from the radiator back to the thermostate housing that have also worked very well. With this configuration combined with dual Spall electric fans the thing cools great.

One other benefit of a non-water system is that you do not have the corrosion and electrolisis problems of a water based system. In Goodyear's tests of it's hoses it found that a large part of the cracking problems in automotive hose material is due to electrolisis.

Check out Evan's site, very informative tech section, and call their tech department for help in your application.

Evans Cooling (IMG:style_emoticons/default/MDB2.gif)