A weird and worrisome coolant leak

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USASPRINTMAN · #1 Post by **USASPRINTMAN** » Tue May 29, 2007 2:55 am

OK. So I fired up my new Sprint engine tonight.
She's feels like she's going to have a lot of power.
But there's a snag.

Coolant is leaking from one of the bolt holes in the water pump cover!

What? I have never heard of this. The cover is a new NOS 12 vane. The pump is new. The leak is not coming from anywhere else.

I notice that when the coolant in the headre tank goes down 1/2 way, the leak stops.

I turned off the engine before it got hot.

Any ideas why water would leak out of a bolt hole? I have used the proper sized bolts, and there's a washer under the head of the bolt. I have tightened down the pump cover as per instructions.

Could I have used too many gaskets?

Help!

Richard Truett

#2 Post by **Mad Mart** » Tue May 29, 2007 8:02 am

Richard, did you put the cover on with no gaskets & measure the gap with feeler gauges first ? Then put on gaskets of that thickness plus 0.010" ?

xvivalve · #3 Post by **xvivalve** » Tue May 29, 2007 8:34 am

This has happened to me too.

When you put on multiple gaskets the torque of tightening a bolt can rip the top gasket as there is a slip plane there and by ripping the gasket you create a water path for the leak. Annoying. I now make sure there is much hermetite in this area and also 'glue' the multiple gaskets together with the stuff before fitting them to the block.

USASPRINTMAN · #4 Post by **USASPRINTMAN** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:19 pm

thanks for the info.

It looks like I will be pulling the intake later today. Luckily, I have a zillion gaskets. I followed the instructions in the Haynes, but I can go with more gaskets because the thickness can be between 10 and 25. Maybe I messed up here. Got it right on my Stag, though.

Other than that, I think the engine is gonna be pretty nice. It runs quiet, no valve noise, so at least I finally was able to get that right.

RT