waterpump options for a 1931

[BillCNC]

Originally Posted by Joe K

I have made up for myself the "home grown" variant of the leakless pump. The (mine) single seal in the rear bushing (they now have double which are placed one forward and one back of the grease port) and a Torrington needle and hardened bushing at the front. The advantage of this is one can still have the packing gland - but leave it loose as a sort of "backup" to the lip seal. If the pump leaks - give it a turn.

Joe K

Joe,

As a retired experimental machinist and prototype builder, ... I'd love to see some pictures of your "Home Grown" water pump.

Regards
Bill

[Joe K]

Originally Posted by BillCNC

Joe,

As a retired experimental machinist and prototype builder, ... I'd love to see some pictures of your "Home Grown" water pump.

Regards
Bill

Not much special really. The Torrington drawn cup needle bearing is B-1416. The sleeve I'm not coming up with the number (its not marked) but is hardened, made to fit the bearing and is available from Torrington. OD is .875 and ID is .6245 (press fit on shaft.)

Edit: Race sleeve is Torrington IR-1016 (Ref. "How to Restore Your Model A" Vol 7 Page 13)

The rear bushing is (was) the one available with the lip seal (only one) and replaces the original non lip seal exactly, including threads to put on your repop (or original) gland nut. Today I would use what is available which IIRC are now two lip seals.

The Torrington drawn cup bearing method uses the sheet metal "bushing" from the front bearing (it "snaps" in place with a chevron so the original rollers can pass over the joint) and this bushing becomes a "spacer" to make up the difference in ID of the nose of the housing and the OD of the Torrington needle bearing.

There are downsides to the method.

One downside I've seen the reason for since doing mine. The generally available today water pump shafts are UNDERSIZE, having been made from rolled stainless rod and typically are 2 to 3 thousandths under the Ford drawing diameter. This anomaly is reported by Vince Falter at his most excellent Ford Garage site. See http://www.fordgarage.com/pages/originalwpshaft.htm for original shaft.

The solution back when I did my pump was to "knurl" the shaft or otherwise upset the diameter and create a force fit of the Torrington sleeve on the shaft.

And this brings the second downside: the pump regardless of shaft has to be assembled and then the sleeve pressed on alongside the bearing insert. Once assembled, the pump cannot be readily disassembled without destroying parts.

Assembly is not THAT difficult. A piece of pipe and a wide opening bench vise can do the pressing. Getting apart (undoing the press fit) would be a challenge, but not insurmountable. (A strong press can shear a soft pin used to stake the impeller and disassemble from the back side first.)

The supposed recommendation is that this bearing method gets past the issue of modern undersize shafts, which with original type Ford "loose" cage bearings can be a cause of front water pump vibration which leads to fan failure. The Torrington setup is TIGHT as it goes together and results in no vibration.

Hope this helps. The first mention of a Torrington needle nose water pump is the "How to Restore Your Model A" Volume 1 (from 1967) Page 102. So this methodology has been around for a while. There are other later sources where the knurling aspect is mentioned as a shaft remedy.

Joe K