Water pump questions

Screw extractors kind of suck. They occasionally work, but more often are just a waste of time and more trouble. Left handed drill bits on the other hand...

 

Nothing too interesting to see I guess, a broken off bolt Here is one attempt were I built up a weld "tower" on the bolt before welding up a nut. I probably attempted 7-10 attempts of welding, should have called its quits earlier and just drilled it I think.



Related to this work, I lapped the oil pump filter adapter surface and tried this blue diamond product that machinists tend to favor. It is a bit easier and faster to apply than a regular good ol' marker so might buy it again. Picture here mostly because I liked the color



Also related to this work, the lower cam sprocket basically looked like it was new, but the upper one was another story. Here it is side by side to a new one:

I am thinking though, a little wear like this maybe isn't that bad as long as the chain stays tight. The sprocket might be worn in to the chain and gets a larger surface contact reducing contact pressure inhibiting future wear. All the material that has come off this sprocket, will end up being shaven off the new sprocket. But, that is a speculation.

I also planned to put a bushing into the oil pump shaft bore in the timing chain cover to tighten up tolerances a bit. A good opportunity to finally learn how to operate a lathe, borrowed a neighbours machine. This project was put on hold though as I am yet to find someone with a mill/drill press/other machine with enough size to hold both the timing chain cover and tool for drilling. Managed to get the busing below 0.001" tolerance after some trial and error and frustration, was fun in the end

Any good brand you could recommend?

I was thinking about these through holes that extend in to the water jacks. Why not convert these to blind holes using stop screws and thread sealer? They seem to be just a lazy and bad design choice anyway. Think I would have done that had I had stop screws in UNC sizes at home.

 

Is your engine original and did your car come with or without AC?
Because it matters with pulley sizes and number of vanes of your waterpump.
If you have an original AC car you'll have 5 vanes and the overdrive pulley. In that case you can buy a pump from rockauto.
If you're having a non-AC car it will have the underdrive pulleys, and your pump will have 6 vanes. In that case you can't buy it from Rockauto, because the car will overheat.
Or, you have to buy different pulleys, or you have to buy the TA pump.

 

That picture of that gear tells me it’s garbage.

 

Thanks for the input. We don't have the luxury here to choose from a huge variety of brands and vendors for Buick parts in Sweden. But the new pump I got looks exactly like the one that was on, and the engine never overheated with that one afaik If I get overheating issues this summer for some reason I now have another thing on the list to check though and that is good.

Alright! Good thing the new gear is on then

 

I feel for you guys “Not in the States” trying to get parts for older and not very common (Buick) cars.
You have perseverance

 

Thanks!

Do the bolt holes on the water pump pulley attachment flange have UNF threads or something? I tried with both M8 metric and 5/16" UNC and neither is a fit.

 

Neither do I, I live in the Netherlands, so I feel your pain. I paid a fortune for my TA waterpump, but it's worth it in my case.

But I'm glad yours seems to work fine!

 

I had that problem, but adding a clutch fan and shroud solved most of it. The temp starts to creep up to 195-200 in traffic on a hot day, but any other time doesn’t go over 185 with a 180 thermostat.
Getting old Buick parts in Canada is bad enough, I can order almost anything from the US, but exchange, shipping brokerage hikes the price up to the point that I wait for a bulk order, to save some costs. I can only imagine European headaches.

 

Getting a bit jealous when looking at parts prices in the U.S and seeing that prices are like half or less than here

Other than that I can say that the car is in one piece again and we drove around the whole weekend, feels awesome

This is the most in depth machine/engine job I have ever done and for me it was really a struggle at times. It took me several weeks to get all parts, get the correct information about it and actually putting the thing together. It was fun also, but I hope it chooses to break down during the winter season next time Most satisfactory moment was probably to lay on 300 Nm on the newly painted harmonic balancer and feeling the torque wrench click. Kind of sealed the deal. The trick using vice grips on the flex plate for a counter torque worked tremendously well. I want to say thanks for all help I have gotten here on this forum, it really helped me.

First thing that happened though was a coolant leak of the left side (drive side) through hole bolts that go in to the block. I don't know what happened. Maybe I after tightened the bolt after the Loctite 542 had cured and that broke the seal. As it was a bit hard to get the threads dry and clean with the cover on I tried with PTFE tape. As usual, that didn't work on non-tapered threads. So drained the coolant system again (had only refilled with water for pressure testing fortunately), cleaned with long brushes and inspected with a boroscope to ensure it was clean, was a PITA. This time I bottomed out the thread with a stopscrew and Loctite 542. I lost a few turns of thread for the bolt but I hope it will help me remove this bolt some other time without all this again. Were these really through holes from the beginning, or is it just that people have had to drill out the blind holes to get them pesky screws out? Because the other side have all blind holes and the shop manual says nothing about through holes. I also noticed that one of the lower bolts at the level of the crank also sits in a through hole.

This was the correct way to fix this long term. But in retrospect I would have least tried running without the broken bolt. Just sealed the water pump and carefully pressure tested the system several times. Maybe I could have then post-poned this work until off-season. Because this was sooo much work, with bad timing. I understand that a professional who has done this before and has most parts and tools can probably get through it rather quick, but for a newb like me... On the other hand not too good if I suddenly would have gotten a water leak into the crankhouse half way into this season and far from home... Ooh well, so great it is back together again at least!

 

TA’s listed spec is only 8-10 ft-lbs torque on timing chain cover bolts and mentions to tighten exactly like you said.

 

On TA timing cover what size bolt goes here?

Does this bolt come with set of TA timing cover bolts?

 

For stock set ups I think nothing goes there, it looks blind.
It looks like MAYBE for a pick up for crank triggered ignition?

 

Thank you. I was looking everywhere for that bolt. Think I am supposed to have 18 bolts (including 2 fuel pump bolts) and that’s how many I have.