: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.

I had the rod simpson pump and it worked just fine, no problems. A little bird (or was that a little brad) told me the renegade and simpson water pumps are both from an early Chrysler big block or something like that, Renegade supposedly modifies the internals a bit for better flow. other than that I beleive they are very similar.

One question: do you have holes drilled in your thermostat?

the chebby conversion water pumps can build a hell of a lot of pressure when the thermostat is closed if you rev up the engine high. On most water pumper cars the heater system has a built in relief valve type of bypass that keeps from overpressuring the system when the thermostat is closed, we don't have that with most chebbie conversions.
If you don't have them I would suggest drilling three or 4 1/8" holes in the outside portion of the thermostat to allow minimum flow when cold and try not to go over 3500 rpm until the thermostat is at least partially open.

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

Thank you for the above info, the fact is I got a couple of good ideas.

Heres a litte more info on my problem. the first pump
seemed to last for a good amount of time considering that I do not have any holes in the thermostat and of course it took alot new toy high rpm revs when cold while my buddies were watching.

After the first pump crapped the bed I called and had a talk with Rengade and they informed it would be best to stay below 2500 rpm untill the thermostat opened - which I have done religously and still another one has bit the dust.

This time when I called to order a new pump I looked for somemore advice and really seemed to get the "your car doesn't have our $1000+ radiator system therfore it is all screwed up" implication.

I have no cooling issues when the car has a brand new pump in it but as the pump starts to degrade the temp rises.

Maybe for the new pump I'll take out the themostat and, would it make any sense to drop from a 16 psi cap to a lower pressure?

Finally, anybody ever have any luck with Water Wetter or the like?

Why not dump the thermostat, and just use a restricter? I still have several in my box from my V8 conversation. Would definately solve your restiction problem. Dad

Lots of Pantera guys also use a reverse cooling system where the flow is reversed and actually cools the heads before it goes into the block. I've never worked on one but it sounds interesting.
Oh, and don't just take the thermostat completely out unless you install some sort of flow restrictor like Dad said. No pressure differential is bad, coolant flowing too fast through the engine is bad too, doesn't have time to pick up any BTUs.

I had a restrictor that was nothing more than a thermostat with the center cut out I tinkered with for a while, i think the hole was too big, not sure. The engine ran cooler after I installed a 195 stat.

Cool..

V8 914 guys. Welcome to the board. This thread got some really good responses before I made it home this evening/morning. Thanks Sammy and DAD for helping this guy out. It is 100$ a restriction while cold problem.

If you tend to drive the car hard before it is fully warmed up... you'll have to go to a restrictor and 16lb cap.

I'm really surprised your not blowing water hoses off the block fittings.


B

Something else I recalled from previous conversations with Andy Leaney:

He used to have his water pumps made for him, but they where based on the big block Chrysler (we all know this by now)...I asked him why.. He said the impellers on the rebuilt/new ones where not always located on the shaft straight. The distance from pump housing to end of shaft and where the impeller was located was not always the same. The ones he had made where all basically blueprinted to his water pump housings.

Now if you purchase a cheesy aftermarket pump from your local Auto Parts store they may not work correctly in the Renegdae or Simpson housing.

I would at least start with the Mopar aftermarket pump that Summit sells (the aluminum one)

Let me know if that doesnt make sense. I'll do a drawing of the dimensions.

B