Thinking about doing electric water pump...Questions though.

[BigB98]

I'm running an FE in and RCR and thinking of going with a remote electric water pump to give more firewall clearance, cooling after turnoff, etc.

Questions though:

• Anyone have pictures/instructions of similar install?
• On an FE pump there's a crossover tube that goes to the manifold. What is that for and do I just run a positive feed line to it or what?
• What are the pitfalls to this?

Thanks for your input.

[Jac Mac]

Crossover tube is the by-pass, I suppose there are dedicated Electric pumps for FE's, just I have never looked! I know that it wouldnt take much to adapt a SB Chev pump to an FE so that might be an option for an electric pump if no dedicated FE electrics are available.

Check out Iain Pretty's build thread for a -real- remote pump system.

[Randy V]

Agree with Jac that the crossover tube you speak of is the By-Pass. This line or other circuitry is required to allow the coolant to recirculate through the block and heads until such point in time that the temperature of the coolant is sufficient to open the thermostat. If you opt to not have any recirculation features in your cooling system, I fear that you will most definitely have hot-spots in the system.
There are a few of us that chose to run remote electric pumps in our RCRs..
While mine is still in the construction phase, you can look at my build site for details on how I am accomplishing it;

http://www.gt-forty.com/GT-Forty/Cooling_Sys.html

[Will Parker]

I found a few link re: remote electric water pumps. HTH

Will Parker

Electric Water Pumps: Stewart Components, Inc.

DEDENBEAR Water Pumps WP1-WP2-WP3

remote electric water pump - Google Product Search

[Jack Houpe]

While your at it do away with the old thermostat and put a bypass external thermostat in front of the remote electric water pump. I run a 55 gpm electric pump with a bypass thermostat and have never over heated my 427 even with heat index of 104. I tried to post some pictures but for some reason the advanced page is blank. I will try later.

[Pat Buckley]

I ran a non -remote electric pump on my Kirkham (Ally 482) - I did not use the crossover as there is no provision for that in the unit I used so I drilled a small hole in the t-stat.

No problems.

[BigB98]

Thanks a bunch of the input guys. Much appreciated.

[Bob Putnam]

Not included in the electric water pump list is the Davies-Craig unit. These also have an optional temperature-speed-control so that you can eliminate the thermostat completely.

http://daviescraig.com.au

[Bill Musarra]

Bob,
You have to be careful of the DC controller. I thought of using it also, but plan on reselling mine on Ebay. There are several threads about electrics and some about the problems. I am planning on using an electric for the space requirements of moving the engine forward. Scroll down to Dave Wharan's(?) post to see the problems he experienced with such a controller and alluminum radiators.

Electric water pump otions, looking for opinions

Bill

[Dave Wharran]

I'm still using the Davies Craig pump and speed controller, no mechanical thermostat. The pump does fine, but be careful of the controller. Unless Davies Craig has changed the program in the new ones, the warm up characteristics aren't kind to mid engine cars. Granted, it gives a quick engine warm up, but cracks the radiator tubes from the radiator tank bulkheads due to thermal shock.

The controller actually starts and stops the pump during engine warm up and ends up hitting the radiator with 180-200 degree water all at once. As a temporary measure, I rigged up an adjustable DC supply that doesn't allow the pump to drop below the voltage I set.....ever. Thus the pump runs at a minimum speed circulating a small amount of water through the radiator during warm up. I'm thinking I have it set around 2 volts, but I'd have to check to be sure. Been a while since I looked at it.
No more cracked radiators though.

I'm happy with the electric pump (the Cleveland made water piping tight with a mechanical pump), but the electronic speed control has issues with the GT40 configuration. I'm thinking of going to a standard mechanical thermostat with the electric pump, but am waiting on an aluminum C block (Tod Buttermore) before tearing things apart.

Dave

[Gregg]

Bigb98, I sent you a pm.

[Jac Mac]

Dave Wharran-- why dont you use a 9.2" Windsor or SVO block--- save yourself the grief of the clevelands t/stat-bypass issues.

[Bill Musarra]

In my research on HHO, the heat problem with the cells is an issue that they have worked on and come up with a solution that should work here as well(just the reverse). They use a PWM(pulse width modulator), which is nothing much more than a dimmer switch. All they do is make it digitally controlled and temperature modulated. For a quick reference of the inner workings go here.

Introduction to Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) | Netrino

A PWM is just an electronic switch that turns on and off at a very fast rate of speed. To the load it appears smooth because it's so fast, just like our vision can barely detect the flicker of a fluorescent bulb even though it goes completely off and back on again 120 times a second. The duty cycle of a PWM is the percentage of on-time vs. off-time.

Their(HHO production) problem is that cells draw more current as they warm up. They have to watch temp very closely as too much temp will produce steam which can be deadly to an engine.

So they have come up with a current limited PWM. They start the output duty cycle at nearly 100%. Half way through the day as the cell is getting warm it may want to draw twice as much current from straight DC. The PWM, sensing that twice as much current is flowing every time it switches on, rolls back the duty cycle to 50%, thus maintaining the same average current. At the end of day when the cell wants to draw three times as much current, but the PWM is operating at 33% duty cycle.

What you and I need is a reverse sensing PWM. One that puts out more power as the temp goes up. These are easily built with a little electronics background. The circuits of the DC unit uses just this type of circuitry. It just needs to be altered as others have done(Dave).


Bill