Has anyone played with replacing or supplementing their water pump with an electric unit?
After cooking a head gasket at the lemons race this past weekend due to a thrown belt I'm considering an electric pump as a more reliable option to make sure water circulation doesn't stop at least until we have time to notice the thrown belt and lack of charging to the battery
Any good junkyard donors? Lifespan issues for endurance racing?
The BMW electric water pump looks extremely swappable. It has regular hose inlets and outlets, you can use the BMW thermostat housing if you want (bolts to pump, also hoses in/out) and absent a PWM signal from the engine computer it defaults to 100%.
I have one with a failed controller, it runs at 100% regardless and sets a code. Not a problem for me.
Also they are cheap as EWPs go.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:The BMW electric water pump looks extremely swappable. It has regular hose inlets and outlets, you can use the BMW thermostat housing if you want (bolts to pump, also hoses in/out) and absent a PWM signal from the engine computer it defaults to 100%.
This.
I've been messing with the idea of an electric on my Fiat 850. This is the one that seemed most adaptable as a primary pump. It is on my list of wreck yard purchases oncc I find one that is easy to get to.
Can you let us know what part number or car to get the bmw pump from?
It seems to me that retrofitting an electric pump would be more work and create more potential failure points than fixing whatever cause the belt failure and adding an alternator light.
APEowner said:It seems to me that retrofitting an electric pump would be more work and create more potential failure points than fixing whatever cause the belt failure and adding an alternator light.
I mean yeah, but it's LeMons.
GIRTHQUAKE said:APEowner said:It seems to me that retrofitting an electric pump would be more work and create more potential failure points than fixing whatever cause the belt failure and adding an alternator light.
I mean yeah, but it's LeMons.
There's a chance I could fix it with a rebuilt Fiat alternator or two, and ordering factory correct metric belts to run everything. That's an option I'm looking into, but I'm trying to explore other cooling solutions as backup/replacement to remove a point of failure.
The car will run on a failed alternator before breaking up due to undervolted ignition, but you get half a lap at best with a failed water pump, resulting in a tow or even more major repairs and even more lost time
Teh E36 M3 said:Can you let us know what part number or car to get the bmw pump from?
PN 11517586925
Vibration tends to kill EWPs quickly so don't skimp on vibration isolation, I remember in the early days with aftermarket units, people were going all the way up to mounting them with exhaust hangers to keep them alive. Also, something very handy for a race car, running the engine with no coolant flow causes very quick warm-up, so if you're going to run it in "dumb mode" you may want to at least hook up a switch so you can benefit from that.
Slippery said:Teh E36 M3 said:Can you let us know what part number or car to get the bmw pump from?
PN 11517586925
https://www.rockauto.com/en/partsearch/?partnum=11517586925
Click on the part to see the list of cars it's in. Handy reference for J/Y pickin'.
That part number trick is super handy. Looks like a junkyard crawl is in my future
You'll need to log in to post.
