what's up with the top and bottom water pump bolts?
 

On a 93 7.3 IDI?

Was just helping my son replace the water pump and thermostat on his truck and 4 of the bolts in it aren't right. Off to the harware store.

I've done a ton of these pumps before and never noticed these top and bottom 4 bolts are different. I could have sworn they were the same length as the ones in the sides. I know there are 4 long ones are they are in the right place.
The ones I am talking about are the ones the book says to put aviation grade sealer on. I just use teflon thread sealant on all of them. Are these 4 special ones supposed to be longer though or did I get the wrong water pump? I can barely hit threads as it is.

The top two bolts are what you have to deal with and new ones usually come with the pump.If you use the longer bolts in the top they screw into the timing gear causing big problems even destroying the ip.

I got it. Thanks. All the years at Ford and thankfully I never rebuilt one of these engines so I didn't know. I did a Lot of gassers and a few Powerstrokes though.

I ended up taking two long screws and cutting them the right length for the bottom and threading them all the way to fit. The top ones I did the same but only long enough to get 4 threads on it. Torqued to 14 and good to go. It's running again now. Thanks a lot.

Something is strange, I have changed a lot of pumps and have always been able to use the same bolts. Was there a physical difference in your pumps.
LOL it is not unuasual at all for ford a ford tech to never have worked on these motors, it was actually unusual for them to give any trouble at all before they were out of wuaranty. LOL I wish we had the internet and FTE back then.lol

It had an after market pump on it and two of the middle bolts were rigged on it. Not the right ones. I got a pump from the IH dealer since I got an account with them. The old guy my kid got this truck from was super nice but only fixed things if he had the parts laying around the farm somewhere so you can imagine. I had to rebuild and set all his injectors, go through the pump and replace all the lines on top already too. The pump was turned way up on it to pull a 25 foot gooseneck with a backhoe on it.
Our next project is to take the whole drivetrain off my 97 f250 4x4 and put it onto his.
It was cheap! He has dreams of 4 wheel drive and 44 inch tires.

Must be nice to be young. I did the same thing to my Camaro at his age. 44 inch mudders and a ford 4 wheel drive under the body.

Ok we all did the same things. I have a couple questions how did you set the injectors do you have a pop tester. And where at in west texas are you located.

There is a difference in WP's. The older pumps had short boss's cast into the top holes, and required shorter bolts as to not interfere with the IP gear(1-1/8" IIRC). The newer pumps have taller boss's, so the bolts are all the same length.