Just curious, has anybody had any premature bearing failures with their Edelbrock water pumps, FE or otherwise? Another question, are they rebuidable with part availability?
Here's my tale of woe...
For the last several months or more I've had a mysterious "metallic" rattle, apparently coming from the front of my 482. I've been doing a combination of procrastinating, listening if it got worse so I could pin it down or seeing if there were other side affects. It finally got bad enough to where I felt the need to take action, there were no side affects. I always had a hunch that it was a water pump bearing, having heard that "death rattle" sound before ... but, for my own sanity I had to look for the proof I needed. Knowing about reported problems with dizzy gear selection while running hydraulic rollers my initial paranoia was aimed in that direction. I yanked the dizzy and did a gear inspect. Everything looked good there, normal contact pattern half way up from the root. I then stuck a pry bar down the dizzy hole and tried to move the camshaft fore and aft, to see if I had undue "cam walk" everything was normal there too. In my mind two possibilities remained, slop in the timing chain or the water pump bearing. The easiest next step was to warm the engine up where it would sustain an idle and the "rattle" was extremely audible. I did so, shut here down and took off the drive belt so the water pump wouldn't spin. I fired it back up and in the direction of the engine front it was as quiet as church mouse, well almost. I revved it a couple times to ensure the sound was gone under all situations ... it was. I just came in from tearing it down and cleaning all gasket surfaces. I'll call Ebok in the AM to see what they have to say, rebuildible or not?
I've always wanted an excuse to change my March water pump pulley from a two groove to a one groove. Guess I'll thank my lucky stars that I was afforded the opportunity.
