ok heres the case, i got this 91 camaro not to long ago and it ran fine, no problems what so ever. then a few weeks ago it started to act up and over heat. so i thought t-stat. well that worked brought ever thing cooler...for a week. then just a few days ago i decided to replace the pump cuase the other one was leakin out the weep holes. come to find this pump that was first on it was off of an older car 70-80's pump. (does this have anything to do with the flow) they actually cut a piece off were there is a hole for another appliaction for it to fit. does the stock pump and this pump rotate the same way this is a serpinten belt motor? next i got every thing back together. drove it home and then on the way started to over heat AGAIN! so i thought i'll try another t-stat. so now my temp goes from 150 -240 (when its warmed up )in about a 30 sec period then drops again to 150. so then i thought air locked. so i did regular thing cap off, let it idle turn the heater on and wait so i did and the thing acted like it wasnt ever going to stop throwin up the radiator fluid out the fill hole. so at the time i had the cap off and it ran a good 175 and stayed there for the time. i put the cap back on and then it went right back up to 220. i knew that some cars stay at that temp so i went ahead and drove it around the block and then it went up to 240. i pulled in and shut it off. i have no clue what is the matter. also most of you will asume this is the problem, it has a 4 cyld. radiator in it... i know i know its not big enough, than anwser this why did it run for 2 months with out over heating once. im open for options. also i thought it might be suckin a hose shut but checked all of them and its not.
thanx a bunch
p.s. i dont have very much heat coming out of the heater vents when its hot or cold.

 

is there a blockage in your core? if you're at 220 you should be getting plenty of heat. (or, that could be your hot water valve too). either way, they're pretty cheap, like $12 for the valve and 30 for the core. you can test your core with a hose, just unhook it and try to flush water through it.

 

thanx for the reply where might i find the the hot water valve? i thought it could be the core also cause im not getting heat in the car like i should. also when they put this other pump on they fed a line to the top of it for the core if im not mistakend and i know that the stock water pumps didnt have this outlet. autozone showed me the stock ones and then we found the one that they had cut the piece off.

 

the hot water valve is the funny looking hose connection with 3 connections, hooked to those reddish hoses in the picture on the left of the engine.

(when i did mine, there was a leak on the hose going all the way down, and i figured there was no reason to fight gravity pumping down then up around 3 turns, so i just went straight...)

but the core has only two connections. one should go down and around to the radiator, the other one to the hot water valve.

the valve is vacuum activated, so if you don't have vacuum hose from the check valve (round cylinder/cone near the back of the plenum) going to it

and you do have a front air dam, right? that does a lot of your cooling while driving. more than the fans.

 

forgot this...

 

well see theres the difference i have the two coming off of the core and going into one but then after going to the valve the one that comes out goes into the water pump thats not the stock one. see the radiator in there now doesnt have a hole anywhere for a hose so they got a different water pump with that outlet on top. whether or not this is right or works im not for sure but the way the car acts im takin it that it doesnt work
anymore suggestions?
thanx for the replys patrick

 

actually, now that i look at mine, i'm not sure they hooked it up right after the engine replacement (though i think it's working fine. but i just don't remember that T being between the valve and the core before....)

good luck though.

and i was having trouble following what you were saying, but my water pump does not directly connect to any hoses. the hoses to the HW valve are coming off the manifold outlet.

 

i have a 6 six camaro also that was a parts car it had one of those HW valves will that work on a v-8 app? also im kinda worried about which way the pump is turning and which way its suppose to.

 

the HW valve should be the same, there shouldn't be any difference as long as the hoses fit. it's just an open-close vacuum valve. i'll take a look tomorrow which direction the pump is spinning for you, but i believe the belt runs above the pump in the serpentine setup, so i'd guess that means clockwise.

 

im not for sure but doesnt the motor turn counter-clock wise? if so then that would mean that this pump(which is the older model) is turning backwards because of the serpentin belt which makes it turn clock wise? man this is gettin confusing

thanx for the help patrick

 

ok, i don't have the car or a real diagram in front of me, but how's this-

just start the car and check the direction. by this diagram, i think the rule becomes "ribbed side devices turn one way, flat side devices go the other". (but don't quote me on this yet, i didn't really think this out)

 

Did you buy a serpintine pump that turns counter clockwise? You talk about it running fine for 2 months with the smaller radiator. Was it colder then, then now? Why did you change the radiator 2 months ago? What kind of fans do you have?

 

If you unscrew the piece of plastic that the hood latch is surrounded by, check the baffles. They make sure that air does not leak around the sides or out the top (that is teh baffle you just removed). This can greatly increase cooling while driving. I fabbed some out of alum (pretty sluppy, but it does the job and you can't see it). I also niticed that the baffles were hanging in front of my condenser/radiator, and that was a bit of a problem.

I plan on removing the foglights and benging the license plate in a v so the air can flow easier around it.

Let me know if this works.
--Dan

 

here's a belt diagram i pulled out of that picture of the engine that shows the 92 TPI serpentine belt routing.

 

alright so from the second pic of the serpiten belt the crank spins in a counter clock wise motion while the pump is spining in a clockwise motion, thus the model of pump i have on there is suppose to spin counter clock wise and that is why its not pumping like it should and so on! correct or not ?
thanx alot for the help patrick

hotrodn: the pump that i bought was a 70-80's pump the reason for this was because of the outlet up top. and plus the people did it before me so i thought it must be right, but now im figureing out it was totally wrong. second about the radiator, the guy that had it before me went to Chicago in it from my home town which is quit a few hundred miles. during the trip sometime or another the stock radiator blew out one of the tanks, i have no idea why but it happend. so then he takes it to a shop and all they had was a four cyld. radiator so they went ahead and slapped it in. they took the condinser out so it wouldnt over heat. so the 4 cyl. radiator is still in there and i think the problem is the pump and the direction its spining and trying to flow the water. also i have one electric fan and its on all time, hard wired into the ingition.

anymore suggestions or is it defintly the pump?
thanx

ok i just went out and watched the engine run and im right, the pump is turning the wrong way for it to pump correctly. so the solution is to buy the right pump, but the problem is where to i put the hose from the core( which was put on an outlet on top of the pump thats on there now) cause the stock pumps that are at autozone all dont have the outlet up top?

 

My 90 started to get real hot at idle, it was better at cruise but warmer than usual, just not overheating. Waterpump was not leaking and the fans were working. I figured it was the radiator. The day I took it to work to install a new radiator it blew a tank. New radiator fixed all my problems. A 4 cylinder radiator should be removed, a brand new radiator installed. They are not that expensive. you'd probley be suprised.

 

the pump goes right to the core? i dont' think that's right. my pump is a bottom outlet (just looked and took some pics, though they're hard to see), and it's like a 2" hose to the bottom of the radiator. the hoses that come out of the manifold go to the HW valve and then the core, then back to the top of the rad.

 

see thats the problem i cant find holes anywhere that i could hook a hose to the manifold. its akward, where else could i go with this hose off the HW valve??

 

is there a 5/8" or so hose that goes from the manifold to the top of the radiator? you should be able to follow it from the radiator to wherever it goes. probably chop that in half, and you can rig the same setup as mine (it's easy to see from the red hoses). i actually have to look at some old pictures from before my engine was replaced, because i have a feeling it looks a little different now, but this is working fine right now for me, the car runs about the right temp and i get plenty of heat

 

ok, here's a quick flow overlay onto my system. the way the valve works is that it blocks either the upper or lower outlet (marked by the box with the X). coolant will always be in the core, but it won't be _flowing_ in one case because of where the flow will stagnate. so the T in mine is in a different physical location than it was before in the engine bay, but flow-wise it's in the same place (i.e. it looked a little different to me, but it used to be under the a/c lines, but still off the top hose. but the system hasn't changed)

basically, you can break in anywhere you want, but the manifold exit is the preferred location from a convenience standpoint, since it's about the same height as the core, and the radiator does more cooling, so it's better to draw from the radiator than the core to feed the engine, and put the core on the return when it's hotter coolant, since what you want is heat anyhow.

 

the green and blue represent the coolant, green is flowing and blue is stopped by the valve.

 

ok this is what i did and im pretty sure it should work. ok i went to autozone and got the right pump without the oulet on top. next i got a different t-stat housing that has two holes for outlets on it. one im going to plug the other i will use for the core return line. THIS SHOULD WORK! so then i got the pump that spins the right way to pump the water and i got the outlet for the core so it can dump the fluid back into the system.
i appreciate all the help that i have recieved from all of you exspecially patrick.
patrick thanks for the time that you have put into this with the pics and drawings :hail:

i will post the results as soon as i find out whether this works or not, its all most inpossible for it not to.

also the radiator from a 4 cyl.- it looks the same size as a v-8 so im not worried about it. it meets all the brakets so i dont think thats the problem.

thanx to all

 

also, it's important to T off the top hose coming off the valve, since the vacuum acutator won't work the other way (when you switch the control to 'heater' it will pull), and your heater/fan and core will be on at opposite times...

 

so am i right about my system and the way im setting it up? the only thing im changing is where it dumps the fluid after it comes out of the HW valve

 

heres my baby hopfully this will all work out and we'll be on the road again!

i guess i dont know how to post pics owell

 

well, i'm still not convinced you're supposed to have a a top-outlet pump, maybe it's because you have the wrong radiator, but i hope it works.

 

patrick i think you misunderstood me, the new pump i just put on does NOT have an outlet up top, the older one does(somebody didnt know the difference before me and thats why it was on there in the first place). so i have the right pump on and took the heater hose and pluged into the top of the T-stat housing.
maybe i just didnt understand what you said
owell im about to fire it up, hope everything is right

 

Ill check my car when i get home but i think the hose hooks to the top of my water pump and i think i just had to take the plug out of the top and i got my water pump from NAPA

 

WOOOOHHOOOOO!!!!!!!
it works i took it out and ran it the hottest it got was 150 degrees.

i not for sure how good that is for running that cold but its better than 260

so i think the problem is solved i appreciate everyone's help as usual and hope you guys dont run into problems like me with your car.

patrick- Thank you :hail: :hail: :hail:

its a wonderful thing to be back behind the wheel of my car

 

great.

put a 195° thermostat in it for the winter. 180° when it warms up and you need the a/c in traffic.

 

WTG quick_90