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Reply to "Aluminum Water Pump Issue"

Contrary to what was previously said the restrictor plate you have will not allow coolant to flow out of the block until the t-stat opens i.e. there is no bypass. IMHO this is not a good mode of operation and does not help in bleeding the air from the system. It can also be dangerous to engine if your t-stat fails closed.

As Marlin says the Cleveland specific t-stat hat is designed to sit down in the hole as it opens, so it may not open fully with the restrictor. Therefore if you retain the restrictor plate I would highly recommend you use a Windsor style t-stat.

The next question is where is your coolant temp sensor? I guarantee not in the block or heads so do you really ever know what is going on in the block? The stock sensor location was in the pressure bottle and from the rapid temp fluctuation you describe it sounds like yours may still be there and is indicative of a sticking t-stat. The temp sensor should be relocated to the water pump which is a suction pump drawing cooler coolant from the radiator and will then be more indicative of the system as whole.

I see recommendations that you remove the restrictor plate and revert to a Cleveland configuration; this is all very well as long as you have a bypass in your water pump......which takes us back to the first post in this thread. If you don't have the pump bypass in principal it doesn't matter what you run as a restrictor, as there will never be any bypassing. That said if you run a restrictor with no holes and a pump with no bypass then the area between them can get no coolant so now you have a passage that is full of air and differential expansion. For that reason I would recommend you drill a hole in the restrictor plate to allow coolant into the passage.

Next point is de-mineralized water.... not recommended for coolant systems as the de-mineralized water is a non equilibrium state and it will try to find a natural balance of minerals and to get them it dissolves them from your iron block, aluminum radiator etc.

Julian
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