Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

67ss · 1K+ Club

Darn chinese knock off parts

67ss · 1K+ Club

My uncle has a 68 charger with a 440 big block in it and ever since the motor was rebuilt the thing has run hot and wanted to over heat at idle. So in trying to fix it everything was thrown at it, big aluminum radiator, monster electric cooling fan, high flow water pump, and 160 degree thermostat all with no change. He was so disgusted with it he did not even drive it last year it sat in storage.

I decided to look at it for him and see what I could come up with. First stop was google to see if anything odd popped up for this issue. Low and behold I end up on a mopar forum reading a 26 page long post about a water pump housing problem. To cut to the chase the factory water pump housing is a tank of a cast iron piece. The aftermarket world makes a nice light alumnium piece to replace it. The forum basically eluded to the fact that the knock off units had very small passages that restrict flow in and out of the block. Guess what when the motor was rebuilt one of these fancy aluminum units was installed.

So last night I pulled it down and sure enough the housing had the very small passages, so small I could not stick my pinky finger through some of them. I installed his original cast iron housing and problem is gone.

dashboard · 2K+ Club

Now that’s a cruiser and I think your uncle owes you some cruising rights. Back in the day, ya I was there, those where the cars everyone was trying to catch.

4 speed or auto?

dashboard · 2K+ Club

Better yet drive it up here tomorrow.

Bungy L-76 · Active Member

dashboard wrote:
Better yet drive it up here tomorrow.

Yea, what he said!

67ss · 1K+ Club

I have some electrical gremlins I am chasing down on it, I don't know if I will have it back together by then or not.

Chris R · 2K+ Club

It reminds me of last year with Pushrod. He used a distributor cap that corrected the locations of the wires so there were no crossing of plug wires to thier respective side of the engine. It ran fine when he installed it, ran fine for me and him on the way to opening night in Hastings last summer.

On the way home, it bang and pop out of one tail pipe on acceleration. Stan was closest to Hastings so we traced it down to a poorly made cap (that was being sold by a name brand company with other good quality products). Since Craigs wires were cut and made to length for the "corrective" distributor cap. Swapping a regular cap wouldnt allow certain wires to reach. It was a good thing Stan had a cap with all the proper wires to get Craig (and myself) back home without a problem. Since then I havent seen any advertisements for that cap anymore. I wonder just how bad the luck is with others that bought one of those caps.

Im glad to see you got the Charger fixed. Hopefully it gives your dad a new lease on this car hobby of ours. Nothing takes the fun out of this hobby more then trying to troubleshoot a problem over and over until it begins to get frusterating.

bowtie · Secretary

This is the car:

John D · 2K+ Club

Yeah, the distributor cap from the "Lee Vue Wa King" injection molding company.

Pushrod · Active Member

10-4

Scott Parkhurst · Super Poster

I had a '69 R/T in the '80s. Super cool car- 440/727/8-3/4...bulletproof setup. I got it from the original owner in original condition and proceeded to modify the hell out of it. If I'd have left it alone, it'd be worth big money...but I woulnd't have had nearly as much fun! The water pumps were 'rebuildable' anyway, so there's not much to gain with an aluminum one. The stock stuff works good to over 500 hp- more with the better radiators out there now.

dashboard · 2K+ Club

John D wrote:
Yeah, the distributor cap from the "Lee Vue Wa King" injection molding company.

I just happen to have one of those caps on the shelf in the garage, I’ll let it go cheap, it’s brand new, never been used.