I am trying to get to the water pump of my 1971 Buick Electra with the 455. I cannot get the fan clutch off. I am afraid to pry, just want to know is there anything other than the four bolts holding it on? Any advice?:angry:

First spray W-D40 on the w/pump shaft and use an old flat blade screwdriver and tap with a hammer between the clutch and the w/pump & turn the shaft as you work around the shaft . HTH
:beers:

Thanks Guy! That's all it needed. Starting a complete restoration on a '71' 225 and I am petrified!! :confused:

Wow! A complete restoration? Huge project!

My guess is that now that the fan clutch is off, you are about 0.00001% done with your project!

-Bob C.

LOL!! NOW WHAT DO I DO??:clonk:

If you haven't done so yet take a lot of pictures so you can see how it goes back together, also buy some heavy duty sandwich and freezer bags to store what you take off. Put a note in each parts bag telling you what it is and any other information you may need so when you put it back together it will be easier. Buy a shop manual.

I just got done putting a new TA waterpump, thermostat, flex-fan, spacer, 12-SI alternator, MSD distributor, jacob's coil, all new belts and hoses on my '73 Riviera Boattail this evening.

I can tell you the easiest part was removing the fan and old fan clutch.

What wasn't so easy was to put this new flex fan and spacer on the waterpump with the fan shroud in place. You have to hold two pulleys, a spacer, a bushing, the flex fan all together in correct alignment, and put long bolts through all the pieces, while leaning over about three feet of the front of the car with your arms and hands inside the fan shroud. It took several attempt to do that.

i know some people don't like flex-fans, but I prefer them to the fan clutch since a flex-fan operates on a simpler principle.

LOL!! NOW WHAT DO I DO??:clonk:

persistence, $$$$, your own hard labor.

The easy part is to get the information. there are a lot of Buick manuals out there, and a 1970 Electra is much more simple to fix than the mid-late '70's GM cars with miles of vacuum hoses, hose routing, emissions controls.

And looking under my Lexus LS400 (I know, but my dying Dad gave me my deceased Mom's car), I don't think I could ever get to the spark plugs like i can on my '63, '73 and '76 Buicks.

Well, nothing is as easy as it seems. After driving the '73 Riv and checking for leaks, i found one by the radiator cap. Of all the stupid places!! after all that hard work removing a bunch of stuff and carefully applying gasket adhesive to the waterpump and thermostat gasket, I thought with irony, there would be a leak from those places with my luck.

i've never had a radiator cap fail; I may replace them for the heck of it, but never a failure.


So, I put a 16 lb one on, and, NO LEAKS

I have a few questions though:

--Is a 16lb cap the right one? The original one was rated at 15lbs.

--I relaced the 195 degree thermostat with a 180 one. I know the faster a car warms up to operating temperature, the better it will operate. But was the 195 thermostat mainly designed as a rudimentary device to reduce emissions during warm-up period?? What is the optimal thermostat temp?

With a 195 thermostat, my '73 Boattail usually never boiled over this summer with MAX COOL AC (sometimes there would be a little coolant overflow into the recovery tank. Now with all the new stuff (180 thermo, flex-fan, spacer, TA waterpump, newbelts--old ones were slipping--, it not only doesn't boil over, but seems to run at a lower temperature after long highway cruises.

The reason I ask is because i used to have a '70 Toronado GT (W-34 455 V-8), which had severe over-heating problems in the CA desert, but not in temperate santa Barbara. It seemed that in the Desert as it quickly reached 195 degrees, the car's temp. would quickly escalate from that point. I had a theory that the cooling system would be more effective if it first started cooling 180 degree coolant than dealing with an onslaught of 195 degree coolant. despite adding a new waterpump, radiator, external trans fluid radiator and a flex fan, it would always overheat in 110-120 degree Desert heat. As I said,I had no overheating problems, and the coolant temp generally stayed within 190 degrees.

I guess these are two different cases.