DIY electric water pump - on the cheap

[MetroMPG]

Well is the OEM pulley 3 or 4-bolt? Make a 3 or 4-bolt "plate" with a center that fits your e-motor shaft.

[Daox]

There is no OEM pulley to work with. This is a new addition.

[Daox]

Here are some pictures of last night's trial and error session with the 3d printer. It took me forever to get the support material out from between the ribs. If I had to do an entire pulley (this test was only 3/4" wide) it would be nearly impossible.

Here we have the test part fresh off the printer. You can see all the support material that was put in and how blobby and gunked up it looks.




Here I finally got it all cleaned out, phew. This probably took 15 minutes at least.

[oil pan 4]

Ford used thermal plastic to make pulleys for vehicles in the late 80s and earl 90s.
The plastic pulley would get too hot, soften, warp and the belt would fall off and your engine would over heat.

[Daox]

I got some pictures to share of the Metro accessory belt area. It should shed more light on how this mod will be done. As you can see, its very simple and thankfully there is lots of room.


Here are a couple of shots of the area. You can see its very simple. Just the alternator and water pump are being driven by the crankshaft.






Here we have the water pump pulley. I've decided I'm just going to bolt the new pulley to the existing pulley with the 4 bolts. There is plenty of room there. I'll be using some nylon washers to space away from and insulate the new plastic pulley from the metal oem pulley. This should keep it protected from getting too hot. This also allows me to throw the belt on if I ever need to take a drive longer than my battery can sustain.





This is where I'm thinking of mounting the motor. There should be enough room up top. If not, the next option is down under the motor mount.

[oil pan 4]

Looks like the easiest, cheapest solution would be what metro was saying.
Find a machine shop or test your dermaling skills by taking another water pump pulley and making some kind of pulley adaptor that will allow an OE water pump pulley to attach to that electric motor. But it will only give you a 1:1 ratio.
If it does start to run hot, I am sure you can EOC like a boss. Just leave the pump motor running for part of the EOC to bring the engine temp back down to where it needs to be.
Then in winter, running hot from lower pump output shouldn't be a problem there at all.
It looks like directly under where you want that electric motor there is a engine mount so you have the perfect place to attach that electric motor.
Yeah you can do this.
Then if you find the 1:1 motor to pulley drive to be unworkable I say get another alternator pulley and weld it to the pump drive, since there is no way I can see that would allow you to bolt it together. But that looks like it might give you a 1:3 motor to pump speed increase.

[Daox]

No offense, but I'm sticking with the plastic pulleys. I can make them at very little cost and this project is about DIY on the cheap. Also, if I never push the limits with the ABS, I'll never really know what it can or can't handle. If it fails, I'll learn a lesson and build it better next time. If it works, I also learned a lesson and know that it can handle more than I thought it might be able to.

I just started printing the motor pulley. It'll be done in about 3 hours. It has 56 grooves in it and is roughly 3.625" in diameter. Here it is.

[Daox]

Here is the motor pulley. I have yet to fit it up to the motor.

[bennelson]

You did that on the UP 3-D?

I'm impressed!

[nimblemotors]

I was planning an electric water pump on my MGEO.
What I did was gut the mechanical pump, left the housing intact.
So the pump itself can be anywhere. Seems like an easier way to do it.
I never finished that job, the car still has the stock pump.