Oh, it pressurized alright...trust me...especially after sucking some air in there and then warming up. Gets right up to 12 lbs in a hurry.
True. The Stant is a partial pressure cap, but they do make a full pressure version. If this continues, I'll try one. I never had a problem with the partial pressure cap prior to this incident.'
Although the plugged weep hole did slow down the sucking of air into the pump, it didn't stop it completely, as tugging on the "safety" vent lever proved after doing some errands...there was SOME air (NOT steam) in there, for certain, but not nearly as much, and there wasn't enough air in the system to prevent the heater from getting hot water. Maybe pump changeout tomorrow...THEN we'll know more.
Front end came off this afternoon, and the "el cheapo" pump was installed properly...but a cheapo. I'm suspicious of the lip seal indeed, as it appears to be cocked somewhat. It's a crappy little affair compaired to the Cardone rebuild I got. Interesting also is that the "el cheapo" has 7 small vanes that are set too shallow, while the Cardone pump has 6 big vanes that go all the way back to the end of the shaft. The lip seal arrangement also looked a LOT beefier on the Cardone; the "el cheapo" spring for the lip seal was so weak, I could press it down with my finger easily. Also, there were tell-tale signs of leakage around the weep hole once I got the pump off...even more evidence of early seal failure. The "el cheapo" is only two years old.
The front cover, amazingly, shows no real signs of corrosion at all, but I'm going to ScotchBrite the surface to take a better look, just to be sure.
Looks like I found the problem, but won't know until I make everything "pretty" (I'm nuts about keeping things clean and painted) and properly installed and then do a test run. But, it wouldn't surprise me. I lot of service station operators are using bottom-barrel parts suppliers like Poop Boys and AutoBone of late to save money, and this may be an example. From the looks of things, I'd recommend this A-1/Cardone rebuild to any pro. They have a couple of plants in Pennsylvania and customer service/shipping is lightning fast, even through a reseller. They also have smog pumps...something I may have to do as well, since I note only two of the three vanes in mine are really moving a lot of air! Another thing to inspect/fix/replace.
Oh the joy of old cars. Keeps guys like me out of trouble with the local girls, though! Thanks to Steve for all his helpful tips.
...and is now back together and cooling as new! I just backflushed the radiator core, as it was flowing too well to really indicate a rodding, and there wasn't much header scale in the top tank.
Cause: Defective lip seal in cheaply rebuilt water pump.
A-1/Cardone is a rebuilder/manufacturer. They do not sell direct, but their porducts are available at retailers, including rockauto.com, probably one of the better online parts stores. Most of their retailing is on the east coast, however, but their rebuild quality is excellent from what I've seen.
I've never had many problems with NAPA parts, as a rule, and they're always preferrable over "bonehead" retailers like Poop Boys and AutoBone. It's best to avoid those two places in particular...bad parts, worse counter help, sneaky corporate pricing games. Most all NAPA stores I've ever dealt with (for 30+ years) are pretty good, although I notice lately that they're sort of "morphing" in to a better Poop Boys, as they're feeling the competition.
For locally bought parts, I still trade with local independents. The big chain stores aren't even good for simple items like oil and filters anymore. AutoBone doesn't even carry straight weight oil anymore from the big producers, only their house brand garbage oil! Reason? More profit mark-up in "cachet" multi-weights, especially the syns and syn blends. Do some pricing...AutoBone is usually more expensive on these items than most others.
Another bone to pick with the big chains...poor quality belts and hoses. AutoBone carries Mexican belts and molded hoses with predictably poor quality. PoopBoys seems more interested in selling illegal "pocket bikes," go-karts, refrigerators and DVD players than auto parts. Shame, since I remember when the old, pre-corporate Pep Boys was a pretty decent and cheap place for old car fans to get stuff. Now, if your car is more than 10 years old, forget it....they won't carry it at all. Their counter help is de rigeur for corporate retailers these days...meaning minimum wage, off-the-street dummies. Most wouldn't know the business end of a wrench from a ball peen!
102° here today. Stop and go driving, AC running without cycling...never got above thermostat temperature, ever. Who says those single row core radiators were "weak?"
Being curious (and having too much time on my hands sometimes) I took the old one and pressed off the impeller to get a look at the condition of the cheapie lip seal used in it. The failure cause was a poor quality rubber used as the sealing agent...even with distilled water/polypropylene glycol, the seal was severely abraded and the rubber appeared "checked." The bearing was still good, but didn't look to be of very good quality. This, in combination with a really weak (no rust) seal spring, and all hell broke loose in the cooling system.
Another object lesson in "you get what you pay for!"
Att: Chrysler fans- "OldeChrysler" aka "DeserTBob" is a poser- he drives a 1979 Honda and has been flaming American cars on Usenet now for 5 years. See his previous threads below:
ATT: "OldeChrysler" aka "DeserTBob" is a ricer, read his previous pro-rice post below:
1 From: DeserTBoB - view profile Date: Fri, Dec 16 2005 6:30 pm Email: DeserTBoB Groups: alt.collecting.8-track-tapes Not yet ratedRating: show options Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
One BIG reason? Long term support. I just ordered some miscellaneous OEM gasket and small parts for my Accord, and Honda still provides them, along with internet ordering! Try THAT with GM or Ford! This car is 27 years old, and I can still get most all critical parts to keep it running as it should. Trim and interior parts are spotty, but still available sometimes, and in the right color! I remember my '70 Ford...after five years, you couldn't order dash pads for it anymore...five years! I put a new dash in that Accord in 1997, fresh from the factory, and in the CORRECT color.
Another story on this. For reasons never fully explained, my grandmother bought one of 199 Toyota Crowns sold in the US that year. This was truly a "japmobile"...4.11 gears with 14" rims which would give about 4500 RPM at freeway speeds, archiac power steering stolen from GM's Saginaw design used from 1951-'55, a direct and smaller copy of Moraine's power brake unit, a downsided copy of the Borg-Warner/Ford FMX transmission, dash design stolen from the 1969-70 Oldsmobile...just a patchwork of mismatched, badly engineered parts that didn't work well. Add the then-common "jap" styling, and you had a real novelty...and one that would have people stop and gawk every time you drove it. In Japan, these cars were considered to be limousines, and all high government and industry officials of the late '60s and early '70s were chauffeured around in them. True to form of the era, it was too small for most any American, unless you were a woman. It also had the horrid 4M straight 6 cylinder engine, which, like many Toyotas of the era, would burn exhaust valves regularly due to bad cooling design. The 4M also had siamesed cylinders, which gave uneven piston skirt and ring wear. Chevrolet also had siamesed cylinders on its dreadful small block 400", which didn't last very long.
Anyway, Grandma gave the Crown to my Mom to use as a "grocery getter" so she wouldn't have to use the Cadillac around town, and Grandma went to a Buick X body, which lasted her until she died in it in an accident. Not that it mattered much to my mom...the Crown got worse gas mileage than did the Cadillac...around 11 MPG around town, MAYBE
14 on the road. Anyway, since it was such a curiousity to people on the street, and in mint condition, we kept it in the fleet.
One day many years later, a tell tale puddle of green under the front of the engine foretold a failing water pump seal. Getting a water pump for Toyopet 4M in the US was nigh impossible through most parts sources, but one call to a local Toyota dealer had a new pump, with its captive viscous fan drive clutch, air freighted to him the next day! $104, which for a water pump in those days was outrageous, but they had the parts. Other very obscure oddball parts for this particular car, such as the retro-50s power steering gearbox, were also similarly available for years afterward, even though only 199 of these things were sold in the US in 1971!
Try that on GM or Ford...FAHGEDDABOUDIT! However, Chrysler has bucked that trend, and you can still get many minor parts for the old M-body RWD Fifth Avenues today, even though most M-bodies are more than 20 years old. I bet Noodles can't get a lot of parts for his Grand Prick now, either! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh...the Crown? My sister wound up with it, and sold it to an interested collector. Despite her inability to keep a car running for more than a year at a time, the Crown carried her around for two. Reason she got rid of it? Bad fuel economy!
Sounds about right. American Honda frowned on dealers tacking on a big markup due to the cars' popularity, but many did anyway, sometimes up to $500, putting the Honda into the Big 3's price territory...and they'd STILL outsell 'em. The Datsun store I worked at briefly was tacking on $750 onto 280Zs and $500 on longbed pickups using the old "LustreGlaze" scam...$750 for a cheapie wax job...just to make up for the lousy sales on everything else. They couldn't get rid of 710s no matter how high the spiff or how hard the ad campaign. One weekend, the snails manager offered a $500 spiff on ANY 710 sold that weekend, regardless of how many. As luck would have it, I managed to get four "ups" looking for wagons, and we had 4 710 wagons, two in that ugly pumpkin orange, one in a nasty "rubber red", but one in a really nice dark metallic green. I was quite happy, and so was the store owner, just to get rid of 'em. The F&I guys were really pissed off, since three were cash deals. F&I guys would try to rip off the salesman, even on cash deals, by throwing a "pad" in on the rear end of the deal, but I'd always catch them. Chuckie Noodles would've made a GREAT F&I guy; they were all crooks and frauders.
Meanwhile, down the street at Honda, people couldn't get enough of the Accord and Civic hatchbacks...they were literally selling them off the trucks as they arrived, and they were taking two and three deliveries a DAY. They had to have 2 shifts of prep guys just to set 'em up right off the trucks and drive 'em to the front to make delivery. A guy who sold over there told me there was no selling involved...just order taking, and they got full commish on each one. They sold themselves. Things were a little better over at the Toyota store, Celicas being the big movers over there, as well as the tinny Corrolas, but nothing like what Honda had going. Over at the Chrysler-Plymouth store, the only thing that was selling out were Aspens and Cordobas. I remember one weekend I drove by, and they had all their "Space Duster" hatchbacks backed up to the street with the hatches open, and they sold 'em all out in one Saturday. Hatches were hot in the '70s. People liked the Cordoba, too...until they checked the gas mileage.
In the Clarion display most Datsun dealers had, there was the "el cheapo" AM/FM mono (not a too bad radio, actually), a really lousy AM/FM stereo (bad noise problems) with shitty 4" speakers, an AM/FM/cassette (actually by Fujitsu) and...TADA...one AM/FM/8 track from...RCA! This was back before the days of lots of aftermarket in-dash radios, so selling radios was a profitable business. Most opted for the stock AM/FM mono, which I believe tacked on $39.95. The second most popular was the RCA 8 track, and I remember that set had some balls to it. I seem to remember it was more expensive than the Fujistu-Ten cassette, which was ALWAYS coming back for warranty repair. The RCAs were so popular, they'd "recycle" them as 1 or 2 year old cars would come back on trade-in, clean the heads, and sell them as "demonstrator" units on new cars. Over at Honda, the Panasonc AM/FM/8 track was their biggest seller by far...the one with the fold-away radio scale. No power, but clean sounding until you pushed it too far. The Honda stock AM Fujitsu-Ten radios were really awful, so they made a lot of money on 8 tracks back in those years.
I seem to remember GM being VERY pissed off at longtime franchise holders who'd add Japanese lines. I know this Datsun dealer had to build a separate facility away from his B-O-P outlet, or GM threatened to start screwing with his inventory, which was their perogative, since he was an independent operator using factory provided stock. Factory outlet stores, which still existed in those days, were especially vulnerable to this, since GM was paying the flooring costs on the cars and the dealer had no money up front on any of them. Franchisees had more latitude, since they had to pay all flooring costs. If an outlet operator pissed off Woodward Avenue enough, though, they'd wind up with crap like 4 cylinder stick shift Pontiac Venturas they couldn't sell. You remember those...the rebadged Novas with the "engine flavor of the day" which started that big GM engine fraud lawsuit. I remember going to an Olds store and finding three V8 Omegas on the line...one with an Olds 350, one with a Chevy 305, and one with a Buick 301! I remember asking the "up" guy, "Since when do you sell all three BOP cars here?" His reply, "Just go to parts, stick whatever badge you want on 'em." What a nudofraud deal THAT was....
They should've given you a free new Delco 8 track every time you'd blow a rear end...which'd be about 4 times a year, as I remember them. '66s were THE worst for that. Go around a corner, the spider gears would crack in half. I heard the early '67s were the same, but a production change in that model run fixed the problem.
Looks like "OldeChrysler" aka "DeserTBob" has been outed again. Both as a troll, and as a dumb ass, who tore down an entire 318 motor for a "cooling problem", when in fact the problem was a stuck thermostat.
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