If you have a electric water pump HAVE A SPARE RELAY IN THE GLOVE BOX!!!! Sigh I was stranded for a decent period of time cause mine gave out then the coolant temp shot up to 260!!! I turned off the engine but couldn't go anywhere cause the relay was toast and I didn't feel like buying a new engine so yeah also carry a spare relay. Six bucks worth of insurance ain't bad at all.

Mike

 

Cam driven Waterpumps Own!

 

Till it spits all over $300 opti.

 

Why? If the relay goes out you can just hardwire it, and your relay should be soldered anyway.

 

Because relays will just go bad. I had this happen to me also, thankfully, I wa sonly a half mile from my apt so my car didn't overheat. I am going to pick up a spare relay as well. And don't soder, use female connectors! Makes for an easy 30 second swap!

 

Bad bad bad BAD advice. ALWAYS solder anything important and electrical. Like I said, if it goes bad, you can hardwire it. Female connectors cause resistance, current spikes, vibration will mess with the connection. It's bad for the pump, bad for the relay, and bad for carrying current. I spent too many years working on high powered brushless R/Cs to bother with connectors of any type in an application like this

 

LMAO.. I replaced opti and waterpump together at ~100k... I dont think ill be worrying about it for a long time.

 

I'd have pirated some other relay from the car, they are all pretty much the same right?

 

I'm not too sure whether or not you could pirate one from one of the other systems... But having a spare relay in the car is my main point. Hopefully this might stop a few of us from being stranded.

Mike

 

Yeah you could have just snagged the abs relay and you'd have been fine I personally wouldn't solder the relay but that's just my preference. I would however make sure it's in a place where it won't get alot of moisture in it.

 

The Airpump relay is a nice spare.

 

what about those how dont have an opti =) hahahahhaa

 

depedning on the setup used you could wire the relay to where if the relay fails it would fail in a closed position and still run the pump along with a signal light leting you know that the pump is being run all the time due to relay failure. Once I get my pump I am going to work out the best setup to wire it up. With a 5 termonal bosch relay this should be posible but I would have to play with it for a while first.

and yes. solder or wire to wire contact is your friend. but conetcors and spade termonals will not give you the integrity that you are looking for

 

umm... damn.

couple things.

one, you dont want to solder the RELAY in place... you can solder the connector, but not the relay itself. that would just be stupid. btw, while its a very debatable subject, and one can make a compelling argument either way for soldered connections, in this case, it really doesnt make much diff.


two. if you're smart, you installed your water pump using the same relays the rest of the car uses. pull one from another source ( the air pump one someone suggested sounded good..) another good one would be the driving lights, horn or power window.

three.
what does a relay do? it just triggers a high current switch with a low current one.
the simplest solution is to temporarily jump the plug where the relay is.. this will safely turn the water pump on all the time... then you just drive to the nearest auto store or home or wherever and get a new relay later.

having it fail safe is a great idea.. athough that would probly envolve two relays unless you dont mind pulling the WP power thru the ignition on circuit.


btw, every factory connector on your car, from the pins on the ECM, to the connectors on the sensors to the lights, EVERYTHING is crimp connectors. not soldered.

soldering provides a great electrical connection. crimping provides a great MECHANICAL connection.
ideally, you want both. crimp it properly to stay into place, then solder it.
jsut be sure to brace any soldered connector properly. solder makes it so the connection cannot flex. if its forced to flex (say by soldering a ring terminal, bolting the ring down, and having the soldered connection support the wire.) then cracks can form in the solder, possibly leading to failure or atleast higher resistance....

 

I just use a 5wire female relay base that you can replace the relay pretty quick like. Just like the 30 amp factory ones . I stole it from one of my nitrous kits . But all the wires are soldered to their termination points if applicable. Like the "switch" wire from the ignition and so forth.