Water Pump Installation
With all of the problems the truck had over the summer with the engine over heating, I decided to make some significant changes. I also tried swapping out the failed fan clutch with a flex-a-lite dual electric fan. This did not make any difference. Unfortunately, at the time, I had not yet figured out that it was the Q-siren that was causing the overheating. It was blocking so much air on the highway that there was no way to keep it from overheating. Still believing it was the radiator and water pump causing the problem, I contacted BeCool and Marty was incredibly helpful. They agreed to help us out with a new, custom made all aluminum radiator and I purchased a new Edlebrock high performance water pump. Now, I thought, there would be no doubt as to whether or not the cooling system would be able to keep up. Hindsight is usually 20/20 and once the Q-siren was moved to the front of the bumper the overheating ceased to be a problem
Back to the present… The first task was to remove the radiator since that would make getting to the water pump that much easier. Not that it would be easy in and of itself. With the radiator out of the way, I could easily remove the fan clutch and fan from the water pump shaft. Now came the hard part, getting the water pump off of the engine without removing the alternator, power steering pump and air conditioning compressor since each one of these had their bracketry connected to the water pump. It took some finesse but I managed to remove the pump without having to remove too many of the L&L brackets.
The new water pump, being aluminum, was sprayed with a clear lacquer to prevent the aluminum from oxidizing. Then it was bolted to the engine block after being carefully put into place with the new gaskets and backing plate that came with it. After re-installing the ARP stainless bolts to mount the water pump to the 460, the L&L brackets were reattached. The belts were reinstalled and tensioned. Last, but not least, the lower radiator hose was reattached. Now all that was left was to install fan clutch & fan, and to install the new BeCool radiator.