So I might have a seeping water pump plate to timing cover gasket or the bottom of the water pump gasket could be coolant soaked from a previous leak I’m not sure. First a little background. About a month ago I started the Thunderbird to move it forward to get something out from behind the car. Since I started it I let it run for about half an hour just because, ya know, I started it. A couple of days later I went into the garage and noticed two half dollar size puddles of coolant under the car. I looked underneath the Thunderbird and noticed that the lower radiator hose had a drip down it and there was coolant on the bottom of the water pump. One drip was from the radiator hose and the other was from the coolant under the water pump dripping onto the transmission cooler line. The water pump weep hole (the pump is a FRPP pump that’s 6 years old and has maybe 7000 miles on it) is dry as a bone. I even put a q-tip in the hole and it came out bone dry. So I figured the hose clamp on the lower radiator hose was loose and leaking so I tightened the clamp, cleaned up the coolant, and figured I was done. The next day I went back outside and the drips were back but tiny (they only had a day to drip). I figured that the lower radiator hose was leaking, as logically it’s at the highest point in that area as the engine is tilted back toward the rear of the car. I touched the top of it and it was wet with coolant.
I then pulled the old radiator hose off to replace it and found that it had an internal crack just below the water pump neck connection. The crack was only through the inner layer of the hose so the coolant would run through the crack and into the webbing of the hose, where it would leak out and onto the water pump. You can actually see a line of dried coolant from where it was spraying right above the hose connection on the water pump in the picture. I changed the hose, dried the area, refilled the system, burped the air out, and started the car to check for leaks. I noted no leaks and was happy.
So Friday I jacked up the Thunderbird because I had a slight exhaust leak (I could hear it) near the header collector on the driver’s side. I tightened the bolts on the header (the lower one was a bit lose) and noticed some coolant on the bottom of the water pump but not on the radiator hose or connection. No coolant was on the radiator hose or its connection. I wiped it but figured that there could still be a coolant leak since, ya know, there was coolant under the water pump. After I put the car back down I wiped the area and started the car to check for leaks. I noted no leaks letting the car idle for half an hour (it got warm by then). I then raised the engine speed to 2500 rpm for 5 minutes and again noted no leaks. I then revved the engine a few times and noted that the area under the water pump seemed wetter but again no coolant was shooting out of the gaskets or water pump. The gaskets are both intact with no pieces missing so I can’t figure out where the hell the coolant is coming from. There are no leaks above the water pump (from the thermostat housing or anywhere else) and the only area that is wet is the spot under the water pump. No coolant is running down from anywhere above the water pump. I’ve got a couple of theories on this:
1. The area under the pump is wet from the radiator hose leak spraying it. This makes sense to a point. However why would the area still be wet three weeks after I fixed the hose leak? The only answer I have for that is the exposed part of the gasket was soaked, and being made of paper, it takes awhile for it to evaporate.
2. The water pump plate to timing cover gasket is leaking. This gasket is the wettest part under the water pump. The only way this gasket could leak is if the seal around the pump plate ports went bad and is filling the area behind the pump. The problem is why isn’t coolant gushing out when the engine is running? Also the gasket is intact and I can’t see any holes in it. From the research I’ve done the pump to pump plate gasket usually fails, and leaks pretty good.
I could just pull the pump off and replace both the gaskets but it’s a bit of a pain and I don’t want to do it if I don’t have to. If the water pump to plate gasket or the plate to timing cover gasket was the cause of this leak to begin with how did the coolant defy gravity and move forward to the water pump hose and drip from there? Plus why after 7 years and 6000 miles did the gasket decide it was a good time to leak? Usually they go out right away. I’ve included some pictures of the area so you have an idea what I’m talking about. Any thought after reading my rambling post? :hick:
I know your pain and if you are like me, it's winter, the roads are salty and the fox is secure in the garage, might as well pull the water pump. I would take that plate off the pump, clean it up and make sure its smooth again, get a good set of Fel-pro gaskets for it and paint a light glaze of permatex Indian head shelac on the gasket surface then reinstall it. This would help you to investigate your water pump a little closer while you have it off, also.
One thing I noticed about the Ford Motor Sport parts is the quality of some of their parts are not as equal of quality as actual O.E.M. Ford Motorcraft stuff. Some of the stuff is made in China or Mexico over Canada or USA.
That's just me, I would rather take care of it while its hibernating than taking any drivetime away from me in the warmer months.
Another note, is the elastomer squirming out of your balancer?
I might just pull the pump and replace the gaskets. This particular FRPP pump is just a Motorcraft stock replacement pump. It even had a FRPP sticker over the Motorcraft sticker on the box when I bought it. I might just stick a new pump in since I've got the old one out. I figured that mileage, not time, would do the pump gaskets in.
Yeah I noticed the balancer when I was under the car. I think that's on the to do list as well.
Yeah its almost harder on them to store them than it is to drive them; except here in the rust belt.
Best bet is to pressurize the system to locate the leak. This will pinpoint the area. But either way the thing has to be ripped down.
As pointed out above your DAMPER is shot!!
i had to fix my balancer once, i dialed in TDC, then removed the balancer.
I scribed the outter to the innner with a mark
separated the two chuncks. put the inner portion in the deep freeze
heated up the outter by just putting it on top of my wood burner in the garage
,, used a leather belt and cut it to length and brought the two together with a rubber mallet,, it went together prudy tight. I figured leather would expand and contract well enough and hold as good as anything else.
you can buy or make a tool to add pres to your coolant system.
I once upon a time had a rad cap i gutted and fitted with a valve stem from an old car rim. just use any old bike pump or whatever to add "some" air. not sure what the magic number is to stop psi wise but always think about your heater core when doing this. this tool walked a long time ago from one of those "you wouldnt happen to have" questions from a friend... thats ok though,, i have a couple of this things to.
i used a couple wood blocks on the input / output lines on the heater core with vise grips so i didnt add much if any presure to the heater core.
any leaks will show up like this,, easy enough,, and you will also start to hear the hissing if your work area is loud.
So I borrowed a Snap-On coolant pressure tester and pressurized the cooling system on the Thunderbird after work. Pressurized it to 16psi and the system held it for 20 minutes, which was as long as I had the tester on the system. I looked under the water pump (which was dry when I started the test) and it was seeping from between the pump plate and the pump which, after doing some searching, is not an uncommon problem with the pump design on a Windsor small block. I was thinking about just changing both pump gaskets but part of me is thinking that if I'm going to take the pump off I might as well put a new one on as the pump on the car is 7 years old. It will already be taken apart but the Motorcraft/FRPP pump on the car has about 7000 miles on it so it's kinda of a 6 of one half dozen of the other call. On the plus side I know the head gaskets and intake gaskets are good since the car wasn't loosing pressure due to an internal leak, hell even with the seepage it was holding pressure :hick:. Fixing this problem will give me something to do this week. Do you guys think it's better to just re-gasket the pump or should I just throw a new water pump on?
I'm going to replace the damper in the spring. I'll take it to my buddies as he has air tools, which make changing the damper much easier. What sucks is that the damper is a 7 year old with 7000 miles on it Motorcraft replacement damper bought new, made in the USA. I guess you can get defective parts even from the OEM manufacture.
Price the gaskets compared to the waterpump. I have both a hose and the waterpump nipple rust off while I was crusing down the road. The hose was $12 and the pump was $16.
i never use the paper gaskets, napa sells 1/8'' gasket material . heck, some paper plates are made of thicker and more duable materials. backs of note books the same and thicker.
i enjoy sitting down and custom cutting out each gasket i need. the paper gaskets just dont suit me when i know mating surfaces are not always going to be spot on especially with age or heating / cooling of to bolted together parts.
my tools usually consist of gasket material, a hole punch and razor knife. for bigger holes, i have old bullet casings that i can quickly sharpen the end.
Glad to see you found the problem. Replace the pump as they are relatively cheap. Take the pump to a machine shop and have them check it to see how true it is. I have had some that needed a little work and that seems to help a lot with the leaking. If you really want a nice one that moves alot of water get the Edelbrock pump, the one on my Bird was square out of the box and has been in the car for over 15 years which includes two different motors...they are not cheap though.
Darren
Replace the pump and make sure the separator is absolutely pit free. Trash the gaskets and buy FEL PRO blue ones. The pressure tester was your best bet as now you know exactly where it is leaking. Also clean the Timing cover carefully and dont gouge it. Use Super weather strip adheasive to hold the gaskets in place and bolt it together with a Torque wrench. Good luck!!
Jay never mess with a damper. If they explode and they can it will ruin your DAY!!!
Hey Tom,
How do you get that 3m Super Weather adhesive off? I like using it but man it is a bitch to get off when you tear one down.
Thanks,
Darren
I bought a new Motorcraft pump today in case I didn't want to bother regasketing my old one. I didn't as it was a PITA just cleaning the timing cover so I threw the new pump on. I got everything bolted back together tonight but it was late so I didn't fire it. I bought some Fel-Pro gaskets in case I wanted to just regasket my pump so I used them on the new pump. I put some Permatex High-Tack on the timing cover to hold the gasket and bolted it together. Yes I used a torque wrench, in a star pattern I torqued all the bolts first to 12 ft-lbs and then 18 ft-lbs. I'll fill it full of coolant and start it tomorrow to check for leaks. Hopefully I find none :hick:.
Normally i spend time cleaning the ELEPHANT SNOT off with lacquer thinner. But if you use very little it cleans up nicely. I never had a hard time cleaning it up but it takes TLC. Thanks
No leaks :). The gasket was actually leaking between the pump plate and timing cover. There appeared to be a small tear around the water port gasket internally on the passenger side. I have no idea how that happened. Hopefully the Fel-Pros hold up better.
i will if i want,, redid the 20th, redid the coug, hell event he bronco's damper was pushing out the rubber so i redid it.
leather will last longer. ,, dont knock it,,, if your scared say your scared :)
Update: the SOB leaked again:mad:. About a week after I installed the new pump I looked underneath it and found a pea size drop of water at the bottom of the pump. It came from between the pump and plate gasket. I thought maybe I had not tightened the backing plate bolts all the way so I removed it and replaced the gasket with another Fel-Pro blue one (this time I used the plate to pump gasket that came with the pump). That was Saturday. I looked under the pump today and found no water. I touched the bottom of the pump where the pump and plate meat and I got a small amount of water on my finger. $%^& it. Either the engine needs to run a bit to seal up or it's going to leak again. I used NO RTV on the pump to plate gasket. I just used Permatex High Tack on the timing cover to hold the plate to timing cover gasket in place (that gasket, both the Fel-Pro and the one that came with the pump, have been fine). So if this thing is leaking again I'm going to exchange the pump for a new one. Then, to stop the pump from leaking again, I'm going to put a thin layer Permatex Ultra Gray sealant on both sides of the pump to plate gasket to keep the thing from leaking again. I'm including a picture of how it looks right now.
If it has to come off again it's not getting done any time soon. When I did the thing again on Saturday it was 40* outside, but about 55*-60* with a heater in the garage. Being that it was 15* here today and it's not supposed to get above freezing for a few weeks. I'll have to wait till it's warm enough to work in the garage without freezing to death.
Edit: I could just stick two of those GM stop leak tablets in the cooling system. It's good enough for Cadillac NorthStar V8s :mullet:.
id go with making my own gaskets, they are thicker and its better no leak insurance.
I'm going to exchange the pump for a new one and use some Permatex Ultra Black RTV on the gaskets to seal them up. I figure a brand new Motorcraft water pump shouldn't have issues with the pump to plate gasket sealing. The lower portion of the pump doesn't rely on the timing cover for a seal but instead those two bottom bolts. The new pump will get a skim coat of Ultra Black RTV on the pump to plate gasket because the third time better be the $%^&*#@ charm :hick:.
The thing is that it's not leaking right now. The bottom of the pump to plate gasket is just damp. The plate is probably just slightly warped at the bottom. My assumption is that, if I just leave it alone, it will get worse. As far as I know paper gaskets don't get wet and then magically seal with the next heat cycle. It's got to come off again. At least it's only a two hour job.
with that small of a leak, i wouldnt worry more than a table spoon of pepper.
your leak needs a good hot motor to cook it up "if" the gasket you put on is good enough to cool down and hold the particulates in the coolant and bake them back into the next warm up cycle. sometimes small leaks like that do fix themselves.
it pays to use a belt sander to shave off an even layer of metal in one pass.
you would be very very surprised when you lay a tstat housing down on a belt sander and watch what happens. it will tell you where the metal is high and low.
stuff warps over time, things heat up and expand, twist and mis shape over all the years of use.. things just arent to oem specs with that many years of running,, hope you get it fixed though, it really looks like a clean motor.
my opinion.....just my 2c worth,,,,,, i really dont mind a minor leak because it all gets tossed on the bottom of the car preserving it.
I personally will fix it if it is bothering me ,, like hitting the headers ~now that cant be tolerated, or its really bad of a leak that causes me to have to constantly add fluids.
A drip,, yeah, that happens and ill let it keep on dripping.
too good / clean of an engine lets rust start to happen in all the wrong spots.
Any leaks are bad because once the engine warms up and the radiator pressure rises it will leak more. See if you have room behind the 2 bolts to make a pressure strap. If memory serves me a 1/8" bridging plate can fit. I had an issue with this some years back and the fix was a bridging plate but it was many years ago. We never get in small ford engines much any more but if memory serves that plate can be bridged and the issue solved. I have a partial engine in the back and will look. Basically the plate is lifting in the center. Once again see if you can fit a bridging plate across the bolts. Years back i was working on an industrial generator engine and used 2 plates one on top of the other for strength. But i do not know who made the engine. It was not a car engine. The bolts are to far apart as i can recall. Do not add GOO to the radiator as this is not a fix. The GENERAL used BARS in a couple of engines and also SUBARU to stop leaks and basically this is nonsense as the original engine design was a BOMB!!
Good luck.
I know the timing cover is flat (I laid a straight edge accross it) and it's not leaking from the pump plate to timing cover gasket. I think the mounting of the pump is slightly off or the plate is warped. I can't see a heat cycle sealing this thing. After all the gasket only got the wet spot after I ran the car to burp the cooling system. I'm gusiing the pressure is probably causing the coolant to seep by the gasket on one side. I'm going to be taking the car on a longish trip in the summer so I want to make sure that nothing leaks so I'm not stuck on the side of the road somewhere with a huge coolant leak :hick:.
This thing is really a piss poor design. I have no idea why Ford didn't just put two blind bolt holes in the timing cover and use two short bolts, facing the front, to secure the bottom of the water pump. It would solve the problem of those two little back plate bolts. I know the pump needs the plate to keep the coolant under pressure from eating a hole in the aluminum timing cover and entering the crank case, which would be bad.
Well I did the last (hopefully:mullet:) attempt today. I removed the pump and exchanged it for a new Motorcraft one. Before I installed the pump I removed the back plate and coated the gasket surface on the pump with Ultra Gray RTV, spread out thinly over the whole gasket surface. I then put a Fel-Pro gasket on and then coated the surface of the gasket with Ultra Gray RTV. I then bolted the back plat on and tightened the bolts as tight as they would go. I stuck the plate to timing cover gasket on the timing cover with High Tack and then bolted the pump on, in a star pattern, to 18 ft/lbs. I went around twice and then let the gaskets relax for 5 minutes. I then went back and did it again, twice in a star pattern. The bolts all moved very slightly as the gasket had relaxed. A very small amount of RTV came out of the pump to plate gasket after I torqued it down but you can still see the blue of the gasket all around it. Since it’s about 32* today I’m waiting 24 hours before I add coolant and burp the system. I fill the system tomorrow, start the engine, and check for leaks. Hopefully I finally find none:D.
I will say one thing, High Tack is the shiznit for installing gaskets. When you have to remove them it makes getting the gasket off so much easier. Just get a corner of it up and it basically comes off in once piece. Do a little sing to get any bits left behind and clean the surface with brake clean. Bam done.
Well so far so good :D. I started the engine and ran the car for about an hour to burp the system and no leaks. I'll check tomorrow but being that it didn't leak while running I think it should be fine. I did look at the pump I took off and it appears that the back plate was slightly uneven, causing the leak. I think the original pump's leak was caused by a plugged overflow return hose. I had to replace it two years due to a plug in the line that allowed coolant in but not out. My guess is that caused the original gasket to fail.