As I now have to replace my opti, i am gonna put a new water pump on at the same time. I was wondering the difficulty of putting a electric water pump instead of a factory belt driven. Has anyone done this (i imagine there is)? And is there any hidden surprises in the process?

 

Pretty straight forward. The factory pump is not belt driven, it runs off a spur gear off the back of the cam gear.

The hardest part is getting the old internals out of the housing.

 

YA!! I've been looking at underdrive pulleys and a/c delete kits all day and didn't even realize what I was typing! LOL Thanks for the help!

 

There have been some good threads in the past that had links to some good tutorials, probably worthy of a "search."

 

I installed a CSI in my 94, the installation wasn't too bad I used instructions I found on here. However, the pump was always coming apart. I constantly had to remove the pump and crank the impeller down. I don't know if it was cavitation and the increase in RPMs made it snap loose or what, the CSI had no set screw so it wouldn't leak according to them. So anyway, not a bad job but does require some fabing and watch your pan gasket when removing the front cover. Make sure its a quality part or else you'll get really good at taking the pump off, I could do it in 10 mins including removing the fans.