The pump can still not be working and not show a "no power" or "no ground" signal up; that's what this box does... that 3rd and MOST common failure type of an electric motor...

The only true way to tell is do a voltage/current measurement, and watch for the spike; similar to how the lift motors on the Firebird headlights work; or any DC motor controller works.

And no, I don't work for the company, infact I'll probably never buy the product, but I do know what they are looking for in the system, how they are doing it, and know that for 99% of the people on this MB who run EWPs, it's not a bad idea to have one of these (The other 1% could figure out how to build one themselves).

 

If I have an internal failure, the fuse blows and my light goes out Thats only happened once. Then the temp sensor light kills power to the car

BUT, it would be a nice setup for someone not electronically inclined. and I cannot say that they don't have a ton of money and time invested in the system to warrenty the price tag.

I guess it's good to have 2 roads to go down

-Shannon

 

The fuse will not blow from an internal failure from an open circuit. This is a very common failure of pump motors. If it fails in this manner, the only way to detect it is by monitoring current. The 2 LED setup will not warn you of this condition.

 

I made my own current monitor that trips whenever the pump motor current drops below about 4 amps. The average electric coolant pump draws about 5.8 to 6 amps, this alarm circuit is designed to trigger if the fuse opens or the motor opens. I have personally had this circuit trigger when I lost a coolant hose and the coolant level dropped such that the pump was not loaded. The current monitor circuit is the only way that I know of to reasonably monitor the health of my coolant pump. When the alarm is triggered I get a visual and audible (80 decibel) indication. I had made some kits in the past but I never really had that much interest. If you’re interested in making one yourself, a circuit description and schematic diagram are on this link:

Electric Water Pump Current Moniotoring Circuit

I figure it will cost around 20-30 dollers for the parts to make one yourself.

 

That's an elementary current monitor there, but has quite a few flaws. First the voltage supply is not regulated or filtered. Alternators and ignition systems generate allot of noise, sometimes in the area of up to 500mV. Since the voltage divider providing the voltage reference gets power from a non regulated non-filtered source, the reference voltage will fluctuate allot. In a system the is sensing 240mV, this can cause very erratic operation.

Another problem is that the voltage input from the pump wire is not filtered either. Therefore the voltage to be monitored is very noisy as well and will also cause erratic operation.

Also if you have a bad ground or the resistor burns out, then the voltage on the sensing input will jump to 13.5 volts. The comparator is set to only warn you if voltage falls below 240mV (or .24 volts). When you have this condition, the voltage input will be higher than the voltage reference (13.5V >.24V). The pump will not have a ground connection and wont be working, but you will not get a warning of this failure.

One more thing, sometimes under a light load the pump can draw as little as 3 or even 2 amps. Under those conditions the sensing voltage across a .06 ohm resistor will be around 180-120mV, much lower than the 240mV threshold. That will give you an warning of a fault condition that is not really happening.

The system we offer does not have these problems. Our systems can tell the difference between a bad ground or a bad pump and also monitors the voltage to the pump at the same time. Kind of like a 3 for 1 deal.

While I commend your efforts, most people do not want to deal with building electronic devices or mess with anything electrical. Most people would not even know were to find the 60 miliohm resistor. They would rather buy a system that just involves simple wiring.

 

LOL's damn people are gullable... hell for 115.00 I outta start making that crap??? not a bad idea... the parts cost $15 the kit's almost more than the pump itself....


any how I wired in a LED to the pump...If pump goes out so does LED... either way I warning lot isn't even worth it... if you have eyes you'll see your temp gauge shoot up anyhow.

 

Actually the parts cost most more than that. To make a comparison, a modern EFI system cost less than $300 to make but sells for $2k or more. There is much more cost to running a business then just the cost of parts.

 

"wholesale"

 

As been said by more than one person, that the light setup does not warn of pump failure from an open circuit. The light does not monitor current draw. Explain how a light bulb senses current draw . This is not an off the shelf system, so everything is custom made for this system. While this system is not as complex as an EFI system, it is allot more complex than a light bulb or a band aid.

 

This device is on the right track and to me cost doesn't seem that bad for an off the shelf device ready to be installed.

If anybody wants to do a search, you'll see that a year or so ago when there was dicussion about this, it was brought up that the only "good" monitoring system needed to look at current/amps. I mentioned this and did a bit of research trying to find out what would work best for me. The simple $5 wiring circuits with a light are definitely better than nothing but as has been mentioned, that only monitors basically for one failure scheme. I wanted to know if my pump was actually WORKING and for that you need to monitor current draw. I did a lot of surfing looking for something CHEAP but came up empty. I found a digital gauge with built in alarms that would monitor current and then could be set to alarm on high/low current draw. That's the route I was going to go but if I recall, it was around $75 or so for that device. I have not found even a cheap amp gauge (complete) for under around $30. I might not have been looking in the right place but just saying, things to monitor current draw generally aren't cheap

I'm a tinkerer type dude so I'll probably do my gauge thing above when I get my waterpump installed and have around $100 to $125 in it. However, for the person who doesn't want to mess with figuring this all out and just wants to buy something off the shelf, this looks to be a pretty good option and priced reasonably.

Oh, just for the heck of it I did a search and found the post where I talked about monitoring for current. I stand corrected... it was OVER 2 YEARS AGO! Damn... I've got to get that pump installed. LOL!!!

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...hlight=current

 

This is funny.

 

http://electronickits.com/gold/dt830d.htm

buy that (or any digital multimeter with a useful DC amperage range), hardwire it into your car, set it to DC amps/current, run the leads to the appropriate place in the wiring (i'm not so sure about this... across the water pump? or through the water pump fuse?), figure out somewhere to mount the LCD. there i solved the problem (besides the 12volt to 9volt step for the power supply for the meter). later!

jeremy

 

This forum is intended to be used by the F-Body community to share ideas and information to on their cars. The information I provided was to assist others who might be interested in a simple effective low cost alternative to monitoring the health of their Coolant pumps. It was designed to be simple in design to make it easy to build and construct with a minimum electronic background. Unlike others on this thread I do not have any financial stake in this.

The comments directed at my “elementary” design may lead some to believe that it does not work. This is not true as the few people that have constructed this monitoring circuit have reported that if works well and have been very happy with it.

This circuit does what it was designed to do:
Provide a visual and audible indication if my motor shorted (blown fuse) or opened.

In response to the above comments:
As far as not detecting a bad ground or open sense resistor this is true however there is a second comparator in the chip which could be set up to monitor for such a fault, however at the time I did not believe that this was a reasonable failure mode (sense resistor is 25 watts).

In regards to the lack of a voltage regulator I believed the devices I used to be sufficiently robust to operate reliably under these conditions. In addition this monitor has operated well in the cars it has been installed in without the need for any filtering on the sense line inputs.

 

I don't think many of us want a multimeter velcro'd to our dash. I hope this was a bit of a joke because you wouldn't want a multi-meter direct wired into my waterpump... at least I wouldn't

 

Bingo! Just to let you know... I for one do appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience in this. It's always great to see "home grown" circuits put to use like this! I might give it a shot myself