z28marine

Whats the best waterpump on the market?

1993formula

for LT1, AFAIK, Factory GM. I put one of those "signature series" autozone ones on and it leaked at one of its pressed fittings immediately. :/
not to mention, the build quality was much lower than the stock pump I took off.
JMO.
-keith

redimpss5

meizere! free horsepower to boot

jkipp84

When I was on the market for an electric pump, there were a lot of horror stories about the Mez floating around. Maybe they've straightened things out by now though. I went with the CSI from Jegs.. it was only $135 and it's been doing fine for a year now on a daily driver.

revtime

I got one of the signature series "NEW" WPs from advance auto and I have not had a problem so far.

1993formula

thats cool, and, techincally, they're lifetime warantee too, so its not that bad. hope it works for ya.
Could you see what I meant by build quality, though? Did you look at them side by side? The casing is pretty close, but all the steel tubes had poor quality material(original pump tubes look alot like stainless steel), and the bends are very uneven almost to the point of kinking, unlike the factory bends, which were very smooth.
Also, the bolts on the stock access plate were still black, On my AZ pump after 1 year they are all rusty. yeah, its just cosmetic, but its irritating for $16X.XX

If this is an electric pump thread, OOPS , sorry, it didn't even occur to me. 1/4 mile is too short for me.
-keith

turbo_Z

i have a CSI and its been doing great on my car now for over a year i bet. supposidly it frees up around 10 hp as well but of course none of that extra power will matter the day an electric waterpump quits working. so IMO nothing beats the dependability of a stock watepump and if i had to make the choice again i woulda went with a stock replacement.

revtime

160 bucks!!! DAMN.
I thought I was getting raped at 120.
Mine seemed to be pretty consistent with the old stock pump side by side, quality looked pretty decent as well.
The only complaint I had was they did not include the O ring for the water pump drive shaft on the timing cover side, I mean come on its just a little rubber O ring, for 120 bucks you would think I would get one.

1993formula

maybe I just got a bad one. I was just glad to be able to get one, Road America was a few days away at the time my pump went and AZ was the ONLY place that stocked them here( we have checker, advance auto, AZ, napa, carquest, a couple local places, and, of course, the bend-me-over dealer).
It sucks to use bars leak on a brand new pump, though, but I was desperate.
On any other pump, I'd say cheaper is better, but the LT1 is a pretty advanced water pump, if there is such a thing.
I also don't know why you can't just by a rebuild kit for it. I was somewhat tempted to pull the guts out of the AZ pump and put them in the stock casting, but I didn't know if it was possible w/o wrecking something.
Maybe you got lucky and got a rebuild stock frame or an overrun, or I got unlucky and got the "NAFTA" one. The one I got was definitely made to different specs.
If I still had the car, I'd probably post pix, I saved the stock pump in case I ever find a kit for it.
-keith

revtime

You know over the years thats one thing I have seen a broad difference in build quality is water pumps.
I worked for autozone for awhile and you could have 3 of the same pumps sitting on the shelf and they would all look different as far as quality was concerned. One looked good while another would look a little sloppy, I even opened a box up one time and the WP casing had a HUGE hole in it, They remanufactured it like that, put new bearings in the whole deal, I could not believe it.

94GrayV6

I love my Meziere. With the combination of it and my 160 stat the car never gets hotter than 180ish.

TMDZ28

are you saying that autozone waterpumps sucks??

revtime

A reman is a reman, you can get bad ones from Oreally, otterzone, or retarded.
Its always a toss up with reman parts.
I was just commenting on the lack of quality control with reman parts, they all suffer from it.
I will still roll the dice with the cheaper auto parts stores though cause alot of the problems you see with parts being returned and what not has to do with the fact the person who is installing the part has no clue what he,s doing.
Some people are good at mechanics, then there are some people who should not touch tools.
I am not saying you should not try to do your own work, you should just make sure until you get the hang of it to have someone with skills help you out.

CamaroRob97

Woah! (lol) Now i work for AZ, we don't carry the Signature Series WPs, thats "Discontinued" Auto parts that sells those, i know cuz i bought mine from them (well all 3 of them to be exact) from DAP. AutoZone sells an ASC WP for the LT1 that has a lifetime Wrty.!
So for as long as u own the car its covered. (My "Discontinued" Auto parts one blew one of the heater hose fittings right outta the pump on the interstate on me! so needless to say i go another new.) And while ur doing the WP like mentioned earlier, do the Electric WP conversion! its well worth the money, to know that ur flowing coolant at a consistant speed of (i belive 25 GPM) and u've reduced some cam drag, which on the interstate u WILL feel a diff.! so when that LS1 pulls up next to u at 60 mph and can hang right with him if not pass'em!
HTH!!

1993formula

Well, yeah, there are good/bad remans. I guess what it seemed to me that this -wasn't- a reman. there is no reason to replace the fittings, that I can think of, then again, maybe they do. If so, I wished they didn't. I can't see GM accepting that pump for a new vehicle, I think they'ed ship it right back to the company. It was just real obvious that the fittings were not made from the same quality metals or bent on a proper machine for the job.

Why they can't just sell the kit is beyond me. Same thing with alternators, kits are harder and harder find for them, and the remans suck. You have to dissamble and inspect them before you install them, or you'll likely be replacing it in a year.

DOH! Sorry, I screwed the pooch on that one, it was Advanced Auto Parts I bought it from, I keep mixing them two up cause the both start with A. I really didn't have much choice, I needed it now and they were the only ones to had them in stock.

All I can really say, is my next LT1 water pump is coming from a dealer. Its worth the money to me to not have to fix it again or mess around with warantees.
JMO, -keith