New 230 waterpump

[Bryce Mcclintock]

Hi guys , I got a new water pump from Andy Bernbaum for my 230 plymouth engine . It does not have a grease nipple on it but it does have a blank hole (no thread in it ) on the very underside in casting along pump shaft . Am i ment to tap and put a nipple in or is this a type of breather and modern bearings dont require grease?

[Jerry Roberts]

Your new water pump has a sealed bearing , don't try to grease it . The hole that you see is a weep hole and when your new water pump wears out it will probably leak from that hole . 

[Bryce Mcclintock]

Thanks for that had a feeling that was the case just double checking 

[Loren]

Back in the 1970s the 49 Special Deluxe Club Coupe I had developed a water pump leak.

So I went to the auto parts store and got a new one. This one had no grease fitting as described above.

All was well for a couple of years then it leaked!

Even then I didn't toss stuff, so I retrieved the old pump, looked it over and decided to re-install it.

Since it had a grease fitting, I pumped it full.

It never leaked again....and I never greased it again as long as I had the car.

So....word to the wise.

[DJ194950]

The moral of Laurens story may be- Drill and tap the hole for a grease fitting of the new pumps weep hole now and install on the car without the fitting as is.  Then years down the road if it starts leaking you can easily screw in a grease fitting and pump in some waterproof grease as used for boat trailers wheel bearings  and is commonly available.

 

If it works out, Great, if not a small loss of time.  ?

 

DJ

[Andydodge]

The only issue I can see with installing a grease nipple on a pump with a sealed bearing is how does the grease get into the sealed bearing once it gets thru the grease nipple?.........in the couple of years I had the Dodge before I hot rodded it I played with the water pump a couple of times, installed new guts at least twice, maybe 3 times and don't I still remember the fun I had with that mongrel fibre washer thing that was supposed to hold spring that held the rubber? seal, broke the fibre washer a couple of times from memory, 48 yrs later.......lol......so when I installed a new Gates brand water pump on the 1941 Plymouth around 2010 and saw it had a nice sealed bearing I was a happy camper........sometimes improvements are just that.........andyd  

[Los_Control]

I imagine the modern sealed bearings in a new water pump would not take grease from a zirk fitting.

 

A rider lawnmower deck has sealed bearings for the blade spindles .... there is a zirk fitting attached. They look like this.

 

 

They have a sealed cover on them .... you can pump grease in the spindles all day long and feel good ... the grease will never reach the bearings where it is needed.

Now you can remove the bearings then remove the blue cover on this bearing ... grease it by hand. Same time the bearings are $12 each, if you remove them just replace them.

Just frustrating all the different mower manufacturers added zirk fittings to the decks and they do no good at all .... they know it.

 

I am just going to assume that a modern water pump will have some sort of sealed bearing in it. Adding a zirk fitting may make you feel good, I doubt grease will ever reach the bearing where it is needed.

 

While the older bearings were exposed and you could grease them.

 

I should add I believe packing in the grease also packed the seals and prevented them from leaking.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Los_Control

[Loren]

For clarity the pumps with grease fittings do not have bearings sealed or otherwise, they have bushings.

The reason my pump worked was that it needed grease, it never got it and began to leak. Once it got grease it was happy.

Which tells me the original bushing pumps were pretty good but needed some love once in a while.

So if you find one don’t toss it!

[TodFitch]

2 hours ago, Loren said:

For clarity the pumps with grease fittings do not have bearings sealed or otherwise, they have bushings.

The reason my pump worked was that it needed grease, it never got it and began to leak. Once it got grease it was happy.

Which tells me the original bushing pumps were pretty good but needed some love once in a while.

So if you find one don’t toss it!

Way back when I had trouble with short lives on the rebuilt plain bearing (bushing) type water pump on my '33 Plymouth. Eventually I figured out that I was putting a lot more tension into the fan belt that I should. The smallest pulley is the one on the generator and that is the one that is most likely to slip if the belt is too loose. I found that just the weight of the generator was enough to tension the belt so there was no slippage and with that low level of tension the water pump would last a lot longer.

 

But going back to the 1970s when I was over tightening the belt, I developed a noise in the water pump a hundred or so miles out of Tucson where I had stashed all my spare parts, including spare unique to 1933-34 Plymouth water pump. All I did was give the water pump a shot of grease on each fuel stop. I used chassis grease instead of official water pump grease, as that was all I had with me. Drove it up to Reno, then west to the SF Bay area, down to San Diego, and finally back to Tucson. I figure that was somewhere around 1000 miles on a water pump with bad bushings.

 

Just keep grease in it and it will motor along for quite a long time even if it is in fairly sad shape.

 

Which is unlike the pump in the 1990s Jeep I once had. That had a catastrophic failure of the water pump as I was nursing it out of the mountains, maybe 50 or 75 miles from time of first noise until total failure leaving me stranded maybe 20 miles from the nearest auto supply store.