SeanR

worf928

Or a damn crap load of rebuilt water pumps installed in the 2005-2010 time frame.

Those bearings and seals were just perfectly fine. Didn't stop the entire bearing/impeller assembly from migrating into the block. Luckily every one I had to replace under warranty or at a serious discount had plastic impellers.

That's fine. You don't want them for a customer anyway.

Guy

In the parts business (domestic marque) we see this all the time. A larger part supplier contracts out to Chinese company who then takes excess inventory, grinds off the name, logo or part number and sells to another supplier.
Tough business.

SwayBar

Roger, how much are your plastic impeller water pumps?

docmirror

If the bearing and seal pack were fine, how did they migrate with the impeller? I can see the impeller moving away from the pump and causing damage, but if the bearing and seal cartridge were correct, they cannot migrate. Root cause is one of my jobs. It's often not what a lot of people first think goes wrong.

SwayBar

I even bought a rebuild from a renowned expert with the best bearing available, and it was DOA. I installed in my racecar last year, and it was noisy from the very beginning. Because of its reputation, it took a while to diagnose that the newly rebuilt pump was the source of the noise.

Red Flash

OK, well, this is all certainly enough information for this acquaintance of mine to make an informed decision about the water pump. Thanks again all for taking the time to respond!!

ROG100

Laso Water Pumps with plastic impeller - both early and late - $325 each and they come with a new Porsche gasket.

worf928

I think there's a semantic difference on what we consider a 'fine' bearing. As far as RCA is concerned, this horse has, in many threads over the last 10 years, been beaten to as much death as possible given that we can only observe the failures. But the almost-dead horse points to a root cause of: rebuild process. Or with more words: Each time a casting is used for a rebuild the appropriately-sized bearing must be fitted to an appropriately-machined casting rather than simply using the exact same size 'rebuild' bearing for the 3rd through Nth rebuilds.

Constantine

Too bad the water pump has to be involved with the timing belt process and be of that design.

Wouldn't it be great to have an electric water pump doing the main duties and a bearing just for the timing belt?

Chris Lockhart

I have seriously thought about that Constantine. You up to design/engineer a new Black Sea product line? LOL.

hlee96

I'm in if someone wants to do a Kickstarter campaign.
Interests going up with plenty of WP/TB needing change every 6-8 years (belts anyway and maybe 8-10 years for WP?).

Constantine

Hi Chris,

Currently involved in designing new torque tube products, besides this being a bit out of my wheelhouse of experience.

However I've long thought about this and there seems to be plenty of other vehicles currently using such a system. I'm sure there might be a few here who would can delve deeper into this area and hopefully come out with a viable solution.

Given all the problems with the original design, it would make a lot of sense.

Update:

A quick internet search found: https://daviescraig.com/electric-water-pumps

Looks like this company, based in Australia, is already making replacement kits that "seem" pretty straight forward and we 928ers already have electrically controlled fans in place. Some conversations with the company to iron out any possible problems for this application, modify or make a replacement water pump housing sans impeller, install a beefy belt roller and *poof*, a new electric water pump conversion kit!

Oops, almost forgot to include the verbal abuse, second guessing and soul draining back and forth diatribes with the Rennnlist Illuminati while developing this new product.

Cheers!