I bought a rebuilt '85 302. Originally serpentine belt system and fuel injected. The builder converted it to carb. I am going away from the serpentine set up in part because the serpentine system is missing. I bought an old school V belt system from CVF Racing that required the lower outlet from the water pump to the radiator to be on the driver side. I bought that pump from STEWART COMPONENTS. During mock up I noticed that the STEWART COMPONENTS water pump has 7 bolt locations while the original pump had nine. The gasket they supplied has nine holes...curious. The missing bolt holes are near the inlet and outlet of the pump. I saved the bolts from the old pump. They only protrude from the pump about 1/2" and don't appear to go into any water jackets. Looks like they are there just to assure a good seal around the inlet and outlet. STEWART COMPONENTS could offer no assistance saying that Ford did a lot of weird things. Any thoughts?

 

Ford had many different water pump designs. Do you need a different timing cover?

 

If your going to do away with the serpentine belt system, you'll have to change the timing cover to match the water pump being used. A serpentine belt system uses a reverse flow water pump.
Windsor SBF Timing Covers

 

Ford also has normal rotation, and reverse rotation water pumps. You can normally tell by the water pump pulley on the serp. belt systems. A ribbed pulley is normal rotation, and a smooth pulley is reverse rotation. If you are missing the pulley, then go to Rock Auto's website and look up the water pump you need, and they will have a little note on how to tell which pump you have. Good luck.

 

trying to send a pic of the back of the water pump guessing it's not working

 

This can be one of the bigger headaches of rodding a SBF using 60s-80s stuff. You get something that will bolt up and the belts are off by half a width. I tried to pulley and bracket my 80s engine and ended up with a couple five gallon buckets of stuff that wouldn't line up correctly. WP, timing cover, harmonic balancer, brackets and all pulleys have to be correctly matched. Too many of the parts changed from one year to the next. I finally solved it by pulling the entire front end off a late 70's serpentine engine. There are literally well over a dozen different SBF waterpumps.

 

The only advantage I have when it comes to pulleys and accessories is that I bought them as an aftermarket set from CVS Racing. They are well made and have all of the spacers. Great customer service.

 

That's no small advantage. March was about the only game in town when I last fought it. Their stuff was very spendy and I wasn't aware of any spacers provided.

If you can find a real parts store locally they should have an application guide that pictures the waterpumps they have or can order.

 

Oh my, this could prompt a person to choose a power plant option of SOB.

 

Yup, it took the Stang 5.0 revolution before they figured out how to encourage rodding and sell aftermarket parts. They finally stopped changing things for no good reason. About 30 years of shenanigans preceded that.

 

The normal standard rotation water pumps used 7 bolts and the heavy duty versions used 9 bolts. They are both interchangeable.

The only true reverse rotation timing covers were used on the 1987-97 F-series, 1991-93 Thunderbird/Cougar, 1994-95 Mustang and 1996-2001 Explorers.

The 1979-93 Mustangs used the standard timing cover with a reverse pump. The factory pumps used a open chamber around the propeller for it to work. The aftermarket pumps use a true reverse rotation design but changed the water pump backing plate to use two small inlet/outlet holes vs the full rounded rectangle opening on the timing cover.

 

That's good info. It's very curious in so many ways. I was feeling pretty STUPID as usual but, I can see from Google searches and mustang forums that it is not just me. Some will say they are overheating...some say you will explode if you don't get the right combo...then someone will say he mixes them all the time on high performance engines with no problems. Disregarding the front pulley part of the equation I took my old pump to my mechanic. He looked at the impeller and said REVERSE FLOW. Then he said that the reverse flow was created by the rotation of the pulley direction and the impeller design compensated by converting it into clockwise rotation where it mattered....in the engine. I left there, hoping he was right, and thinking I understood. After getting home I'm afraid I am back to square one. I looked on Google for some info about impellers cupping or dragging water and found vey little to hang my hat on.

 

It actually sounds like you are good. For extra assurance I think I would take the pump to a parts store or salvage yard and compare the impeller to a known standard and reverse rotation pump.

 

Also worth noting is the bolt pattern on the pulley is different between standard and reverse rotation so they can't be mixed up without redrilling the holes.

 

Good info Nathan. That pretty much solves the possibility of installing the wrong pump.