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trying to figure out which direction the water pump is pumping water.
cold water from the radiator to the thermostat housing, and hot water out of the upper hose back to the radiator?
does one hose have higher pressure than the other?
I would like to figure out a way to run the cold side into a bearing, and flow it to the hot side of the cooling system in my Camaro without adding an additional pump anywhere.
ok, my understanding was correct in that the cold side of the radiator feeds the thermo housing and it dumps the heat to the top of the water pump. my next question is...
does anyone know where the best spot on a water pump would be to tap a 6an line to get cold coolant under pressure? anything between the radiator and thermo seems like it would be under vacuum since the pump is pulling coolant from the radiator.
if there is a spot that I can tap and pull pressurized cold side coolant, will the pressure be higher than the return hose that goes back to the radiator? if both pressures are the same, the coolant wont flow, if the upper hose has highest pressure, it will back flow and give my blower case hot coolant instead of cold (using the term cold loosely lol)
Cooled water from the radiator goes into the water pump from the bottom hose. The pump pushes the water into the engine. Heated water opens the thermostat when it is hot enough, and enters the radiator through the top hose. Either of the pump outlets (the part that is bolted to the block) will be the highest pressure of the cooled water.
Some thing that I am unsure of is the heater core supply. You can tell that the water comes from the heater core to the pump because of the angle of the tee, or "Y" fitting. I don't know if the fitting that feeds water to the heater is tied into the pressure side of the pump without having a pump off the engine to look inside. If it does, the heater hose fittings would be ideal to tap into, because they are in the cooled side of the system.
found a dissection. I can tap into one of the square "cold" side ports of the water pump from the front side of the pump to find the coolest fluid under pressure.
does anyone know if the hose between the radiator and thermostat is actually a vacuum? or at least lower pressure than the square port that I would tap into after the impeller? if so I could send the exit of my blower case to the lower hose to make sure the coolant actually flows through my blower case/bearings.
this guy kept me from having to cut open one of my spare pumps.
what does a normal guy do when the internet doesn't answer his questions? he pulls the water pump out of the daily driver and drills holes in it on a school night
I found out everything i need to know though. It works! I tapped the pressured cold side and looped it to the thermostat housing side of the pump with some 3/8 (6an) clear hose.
cold side under pressure flowed nicely back to the thermostat housing side of the pump. it flows much faster with RPM.
i was curious about the temperature of the coolant so i took my wireless meat probe and probed the line. at idle it floats between 176 and 186 which makes perfect sense since the truck has a stock 187 thermostat installed. for the most part it's solid at 180. I tested my camaros 160 next to a stock 187 last night on the stove and the 160* is still wide open when the 187 is completely closed (ran water to ~200 and watched what the thermostats did as they slowly closed. it's crazy how quick and accurate thermostats work. i hope my camaro settles in around 160-170 range which is completely acceptable for what I need.
once i got some acceptable info on idle, i took it out for a drive. i drove it around 3 miles at 3000 rpm, about 1 mile at 4500 rpm and about 30 seconds at 5,500 rpm. at 5,500 rpm it saw 195*, and quickly recovered once i went back to normal cruise. not bad at all considering the 187 thermo. i also achieved 195 with a 30 second brake stall in the 1,700-2000 range. i think it would have helped if i had the upper fan shroud installed.
next i wanted to know if the thermo side was under vacuum, or just less pressure than the pressured cold side. I split the line in half and dumped both ends into a 2 liter coke bottle. it pulls vacuum at the same rate that the pressure side feeds.
some of you science guys will probably hate my findings because i didnt supply hard data, but it's enough data to point me in the right direction when plumbing the liquid cooling side of my blower in the camaro. I planned to swap the 220,000 mile pump in the truck out anyways, so it made the perfect donor. if anyone wants the pump for actual hard data, i'll send it free if you post the results here.
pics of my redneck science experiment/proof of concept.
10-24-2017, 07:51 PM
coolant flow direction
