Decadence75

iTrader: (17)

Hey everyone. I started on my cam swap today and when I got to removing the water pump I found a chunk of metal in one of the coolant channels. Here are some pictures of it. Is this part of the pump that failed and tried to go through the cooling system or what? Should I be concerned?


Here is what caught my eye when I pulled the pump off:






Here is one shot of the piece after I pulled it out:





Here is a different angle of the piece of metal:





On another note this is what I was greeted with when pulling the coolant hose from the TB. The last person must have been running just water through the system.

thepitstop2010

Could be part of the water pump impeller....maybe

Darkman

iTrader: (2)

It looks to me like the metal is a piece of the throttle body coolant tube that broke loose and made it way to the water pump where it stopped.

Decadence75

iTrader: (17)

I think it is too large to be the missing portion of the TB coolant line as it is nearly 2 inches long and about as large as the entire coolant line on that side of the TB. It also looks like it might have been rectangular before it was mangled.

RezinTexas

take a picture of the object next to a penny or something so we can see the scale.

SS10Tech

Magnetic or not? To be honest i do not have a clue - does not look like anything from a radiator core or a water pump impeller. I do know one thing - i would question flushing the coolant system to remove possible metal shards to further prevent damage to the radiator now that it is removed.

Decadence75

iTrader: (17)

Yes, it sticks to a magnet. Here is a picture next to a penny for scale.

85'irocz

iTrader: (1)

hey Decadence! This is very strange but i recently had overheating issues with my LS1..and guess what, I also found a piece of metal in my water pump...heres my thread on tgo:
http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/lt...-overheat.html

it's very weird, but I'll be flushing the engine water jacketing and radiator to make sure that was the only piece. I dont need more metal wiping out my new pump when i install it. Let me know if you get to the bottom of your search. Today i torched my old pump to remove the impeller and it looks fine, so does the internals of the water pump cast housing....so i have NO CLUE where my piece of metal came from....weird.

SS10Tech

This is just odd, i still cannot think of any possible way for anything like this to exist in a coolant system or even any possible machining processes that would leave the opportunity for it to happen

The only thing it somewhat resembles is a cast trunion nut

99Bluz28

iTrader: (35)

Maybe part of the thermostat...?

RezinTexas

if the heads were ever off the car its quite possible that someone accidentally dropped the foreign object into the coolant jacket openings on the block deck surface. That would explain how the object made it to that point in the coolant path, but not into the pump yet.

Decadence75

iTrader: (17)

Wow, that is a pretty sizable hunk of metal you found as well. Mine wasn't overheating before I started pulling things apart but my fans did stay on pretty much all the time thought and I an guessing this is why. Things should flow much better when I put it all back together. If I ever figure out the culprit I will let you know.

I agree that it does have a similar shape to that, however it doesn't band in the middle like the trunion nut does. It's still a mystery at this point.

I'll check on that before I put the water pump back on. Maybe I'll go ahead and add a 160* to it while I'm at it.

I do not know if the heads were ever off or not, I've had the car less than a year. I do know that whoever owned it before was either a half assed shade tree mechanic or brought it to one to be worked on. Some of the pinch welds under the car are bent where they were used to jack it up, an incorrect radiator is installed that didn't have the return connection for the TB coolant line so the hose was cut down and had a bolt shoved in it and when I pulled that hose off for this swap, the bottom half was rusted away as if the previous owner had been running tap water through the coolant system. Not to mention I am finding various other idiotic things like snipped wires to speakers that were not reconnected ect. I sure picked a winner as a project!

Fuego

Ya...def not a good sign! Flush for sure...