1TUFFZ

Hey everyone,

I am in the process of building my 396 LT1. I am going to delete the oil cooler and i am going to buy a water pump. I want to stick with the mechanical pump because this will be mostly a street driven car with a little strip and road racing action.

Rather than buy an fbody pump, and plug the hole I was thinking of buying a Corvette pump since it doesn't have the cooler fitting in it.

Has anyone tried this? The only thing i see is a problem is the upper heater hose pipe on the passenger side. Does anyone think the heater hose would be long enough if you cut the 90* portion off of the rubber hose? Or is there anyway to straighten a prebent hose?

Any help is appreciated,
Aaron

KW Baraka

Wow......make it easy on yourself.

Buy the F-body pump, plug the hole, and be done .

KW

PWR SHFT

I second this. First its not hard to plug the hole. Second, good possibility the vette pump is more expensive than the fbody pump.

bw_hunter

There is no extra hole on an f-body pump on cars with an oil cooler. The pumps are the same whether you have the cooler or not. Cars without the cooler use a different hose connecting the pump to the radiator instead of to the oil cooler.

Use the stock pump and buy the hose and be done all neat and clean....

slick1hunting

I wondered if it wasn't what bw hunter said as I know my pump is stock and I dont have an oil cooler. On a secondary note the heater hoses are able to be replaced in sections. Each point the rubber line connects to the hard line is removable and repairable with new rubber hoses and clamps. The clamp from the factory is pretty easy to remove with hacksaw or dremel and then peel it away. You have to be carefull not to cut into the rib on the hardline but its pretty easy to cut the factory clamp off. I found good instructions for doing it with a search and I think it was on an impala forum.


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bw_hunter

Whenever you want to see something a GREAT resource is Rob's page - shbox.com

Here is a link to the oil cooler diagram:
http://shbox.com/1/oil_cooler.jpg

And here is a link to the exploded radiator hose diagram:
http://shbox.com/1/95-97_hoses.jpg

The hose marked 'oil cooler bypass hose pn 10197675' is all you need to eliminate the oil cooler.

Really, really simple.....

shoebox

And here is a shot of the difference in the water pumps:

http://shbox.com/1/lt1_water_pumps.jpg

also, how to remove the factory hose:

4th Gen LT1 F-body Heater Hose R&R

1TUFFZ

Thank you everyone for your input.

BTC

I used the bypass hose when I removed my oil cooler, but I think you can just plug the holes in the water pump and radiator.

bw_hunter

You'd have to block off a pipe on the water pump and another on the radiator. Just use the hose and make it really simple.....