The 67 Eldorado´s waterpump is defective

02 | 03 | 10 | 20:50 | Filed in: 1967 Cadillac Eldorado | Restoration

When I repaired the seat transmission of my 67 Eldorado I drove the car out of the garage to have more room. When I wanted to drive it back into the garage, suddenly the radiator boiled over and the temperature gage showed full heat. I immediately shut down the engine. The car never had an overheating problem before and the radiator is new as well.

There are only very few possibilities why this could have happened.

The thermostat did no longer open
The waterpump failed
Air was trapped somewhere in the cooling system

So I removed the thermostat housing first to check the thermostat. This is when disaster struck. The two bolts in the thermostat housing snapped off immediately when I tried to unscrew them. *Cr*p”
I then removed the thermostat and put it into boiling water and it worked perfectly. So I think I can rule out the thermostat.
As the upper radiator hose stayed pretty cool and it did not feel like there is any coolant circulating through it, I suspected the water pump. Maybe the impeller does no longer work. I will have to remove the pump to check it.
My friend Richard came over to help me to try removing the broken bolts which got stuck in the cylinder head water outlet pipe. As all methods we tried to remove the broken bolts failed, we began drilling the remains out. This did not turn out very successful either... The threads also got damaged with this method. Of course one could now rethread this part, but I decided to order a good used one.

Once again Arizona Vintage Parts is the company where I ordered all the spare parts. They are really a great company! They are reasonably priced and so far they had everything I ever needed and inquired for. They are a pleasure to deal with and I can highly recommend them. I´m looking forward for the parts to arrive, as the car in its current state is immobile and blocking the garage...

UPDATE 03/09: The parts from Arizona Vintage parts already arrived within a couple of days after ordering! Wow thats fast! Now I need some time and warmer temperatures to install them...

My friend Richard drilling out the snapped off bolts...

Normally the thermostat is in there. You can see the mounting holes from where we drilled out the bolts. Unfortunately the threads did not survive this treatment...