Water Works, Part 1

So, I've been out of town a lot over the past six weeks - Thanksgiving, Mexico, and the Xmas Holidays. But I finally got back home a week ago, and decided it was time to work again on the Alfa.

Last time I posted, I had found a water/coolant leak in the car, and decided that I had to either replace the water pump, or maybe just tighten it a bit more. Going over the Previous Owner's receipts, I did not find any evidence of the water pump being replaced when the engine got rebuilt. So, I figured, I might as well pony up $85 and buy a new water pump from Centerline. The thing is back ordered, however, and it will be a week or two more before I get it.

So, I figured, I might as well do a bit of prep work and remove the old pump.

Now, this sounds easier than it is. See, to get to the water pump, you need to remove the engine fan. To get to the engine fan, you need to remove the radiator. And so on -- you get the idea. So, at about 9:30am on Sunday, I marched to the garage, cleaned up a bit, and got to work.

First, I raised the car onto jack stands. This provided a bit of extra access to the front of the engine from the bottom of the car, and allowed me remove the oil sump pan guard grill. See, the bottom of the oil sump rides fairly low on this car, and in order to protect it, the car comes equipped with a metal undertray.















Another part needing a bit of cleanup...

I then flushed the radiator. This is done by reaching under the radiator with a 12mm wrench, and unbolting the drain plug found underneath. Of course, once the plug is gone gravity took over, and a bit of coolant got sprayed all over the garage floor. To my surprise, the fluid came out yellow (as opposed to very tasty/shiny green.) But it came clear enough, with no oil or anything. This is a very encouraging thing.

I ended up draining about 2+ gallons from the engine! For a small motor, there's tons of coolant in there.


Then I removed the front grill of the car. This allows even more access to the water pump assembly from the front of the car without having to remove the hood. This also allows me to really clean up the grill, and make it really shiny and all.


Next, I had to remove the radiator. It quickly became evident that it might be easier to access the various fasteners and hoses attached to the radiator by first removing the car's battery. So, I figured, what's another part? So, I unplugged the wires connecting to the battery, and removed the battery.

This is when I encountered my not-so-good surprise - the plastic tray holding the battery was covered in some sort of gooey slime. Some of it had migrated to the metal tray holding this whole thing in the engine compartment. This is worrysome, as a) gooey stuff coming from batteries tends to be very acidic, b) acidic stuff eats through metal, and c) Alfas tend to have very rust-prone metal to begin with.

Hmmmm....
So, I put on fresh gloves over my dirty gloves, grabbed a rag, and cleaned up as much as I could of the metal tray. I'll have to pour some Baking Soda on the metal tray, too, in order to neutralize the acidity, then rinse the whole thing. For now, though, most of the acid was out of the way. Fortunately, the paint on the tray did not seem to be damaged at all. Good thing there...

I then added to the list of things to do: buy a new battery...

I then moved on to the radiator (finally.) Removal was pretty straight forward: remove two nuts from the top, untie three hoses, then pull the thing straight up. The thing looked a bit dirty, but otherwise in good shape.

Then on to the engine fan. To remove it, you undo five small bolts (10mm?) on the face of the fan itself. Removing the front grill allowed excellent access to the fan itself. Then I loosened up the alternator (19mm wrench, 17mm socket for the main pivot bolt) for added clearance, and removed the fan belt.

By now, I was feeling all confident and happy. I did take my time (about two hours), but I had encountered no show stoppers so far. So I figured, time to remove the water pump.


The water pump is a very annoying thing. To remove it, you need to disconnect three hoses from the pump housing. Upon removing each, a few ounces (maybe a pint) of coolant would start pouring all over the place. Again, this tends to splatter all over the floor, making a mess, and breaking things. Once the hoses are undone, however, it got worse.

There are nine studs sticking out of the timing belt cover that hold the water pump in place. I needed to remove the 10mm nuts fastened to each stud. Although access was a bit tricky, removing the nuts took all of five minutes. However, as I pulled the pump out, the thing did not clear the crank pulley right underneath the pump itself. As it turned out, the two lower studs prevent you from clearing the pump out of the way. I recalled reading about this on the AlfaBB, but I did not understand what folks had referred to. (See picture towards the end, after removing the pump. The bottom two studs are the annoying ones!)

Until now, that is. How freaking annoying! Who comes up with this!?

After perusing the online BBs for about an hour, I found I had two options:
a) remove the studs
b) remove the crank pulley.

To remove a stud, the typical process calls for threading two nuts onto the stud itself, tightening them against each other, then turning the **bottom* nut counterclockwise, with the hope that the now-very-tight nuts will, in turn, rotate the stud out from the timing belt cover. This assumes that there is enough thread on the stud to place the two nuts, and enough room to get two hands to work two wrenches simultaneously.

After trying for about 45 minutes, I realized I could do neither effectively.

How freaking annoying!!

So, time for option B - attack the crank pulley. For this, one needs to source a 38mm socket (some GTV models use a 36mm socket - not mine, though) in order to remove the gigantic nut holding the pulley to the crank. I found one such socket at the local Shucks store for $19. I guess that's one more thing I don't need to buy anymore.

There are two main challenges when removing the nut that holds the crank pulley:
a) As you apply torque to the nut, the engine rotates. After all, you are applying torque to a nut that is tied to the crank itself. And guess what, the crank is supposed to rotate, right?
b) The nut itself is tightened with a lot of torque - 180ft-lbs is the spec. That's a lot of torque!

The trick to solving (B) is easy: grab the biggest breaker bar you can find, and pull on it as hard as you dare. Or even better, buy some air tools and go at it with an impact wrench. I do not have air tools nor impact wrenches, so I had to settle for the breaker bar option.

The trick to solving (A), however, is to shift the transmission into 5th gear, and applying the hand brake. This effectively prevents the engine from turning, as the crank is connected directly to the wheels through the now-engaged transmission. So, I tried that first, and as I pulled on the breaker bar, I came to the realization the parking brake did not work, and the car rolled backwards about six inches.

How freaking annoying!! Another thing I have to fix!

So I chocked the rear wheels with a few 2x6s I had lying around, and tried again. This time around, the car did not move much. At first, the nut did not budge. So, I pulled as hard as I could, and just when I started to think "I must be about to break something", the thing started to give way. A few more tugs, and the nut came loose.

Wee!!!

Once the nut came loose, I tugged on the crank pulley a few times. At first, the thing did not budge. However, a few hard tugs later, the thing came loose. I got lucky - some folks require a bit more light tapping and the such.

Double-wee!!!

I then tugged on the water pump, and the thing came out easily.

Triple-wee!!!

By now, it was 5:30pm. I figured it was time to clean up the garage a bit, gather/organize all the parts I disassembled, and call it a night. I did accomplish the goal for the day. But man, I sure felt I'd be sore the next morning.

So, the car is still dead, with no battery, no water pump, and a few parts removed. I suspect getting all this stuff together again will not take as long, once all the parts are cleaned up and ready to go.