Electric water pumps

tigerstyle

tigerstyle

tigerstyle

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,968
Location
UK
Are any mass produced road going cars using electric water pumps yet?

There's a fairly long and boring vid here about them, but when you weigh up what they bring to the party under the bonnet, a clear winning choice for sure! I've wanted one since I was about 12 and saw a one page add they had in some GT1 race magazine I had :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrfux_-6RVw

I forgot to say: I guess new hybrid cars might? But conventional ICE's?
 
Last edited:
Link 404.

Edit: works now.

I'm sure a few new cars use them now.. renault comes to mind although I'm not 100% sure.
 
tigerstyle said:
Are any mass produced road going cars using electric water pups yet?

There's a fairly long and boring vid here about them, but when you weigh up what they bring to the party under the bonnet, a clear winning choice for sure! I've wanted one since I was about 12 and saw a one page add they had in some GT1 race magazine I had :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrfux_-6RVw
Click to expand...

What do they bring to the party? only thing I can think of is that the water pump would stay running if the fan belt snapped (a good thing in itself ofc).
 
Firestar_3x said:
Cars have been using electric waterpumps for years.
Click to expand...

which ones?

...you kinda missed that from your post there.

oh, they bring less parasitic loss to the engine, apparently 10bhp's worth easily on a larger engine, through the belt, tensioners, twists in the belt bearing drag etc. You can tune the flowrate from them (or have it done automatically) so that the engine warms up quicker, better economy and keeps at the ideal temp better. Most water pumps flow too much at high revs apparently just making up for how they are geared to flow at idle, so the belt driven pumps suck even more power and wear out quickly. But check the vid!
 
Last edited:
BMW use electric water pumps on their cars as part of their EfficientDynamics program.
 
Foxtrot26 said:
Hmm vag have been fitting electric secondary pumps for years
Click to expand...

What in? how do they operate along with the belt driven pump? just kicking in at traffic lights, or do they run timers for shutdown protection, or possibly kicking in during periods of high load? how are they plumbed in, just inline with the system or a separate loop? I've never heard them mentioned on these forums, or heard of them failing, or cause a car to breakdown, must be working ok out there!

I guess the sums have been done and the alternator load works out overall more 'efficient' than the belt loss. Although there must be times when the belt wins too?
 
The benefit comes from speed control, its totally independant of the engine speed and so you can control the warm up stage far better to get the engine to temp and manage heat through the NEDC to tweak it for CO2. For example controlling the temperature of the tranmission oil such that you get engine heat into the oil before the typical warmup cycle would open the thermostat can be worth as much as 3% FE gain on the cycle.

Of course stop start cars will gain from being able maintain cabin heat by continuing to circulate coolant.

Secondary pumps on VAGs are for the turbo I believe as they dont rely on thermosyphoning effects within the cooling system to circulate coolant around the turbo.
 
Ha! My old car didn't even have A waterpump :D

Lol. Plenty of advantages to using an electric one. Warm up time is the first one, secondly the pump isn't running all the time and thirdly you can control the temperature of the engine more precisely by cooling it exactly the right amount when it needs it.
 
Its often the last ancillery still to be driven by the FEAD belt aswell so getting rid of that has space benefits and much nicer cold starting without rubber belts to flex.

Only downside is that is difficult to introduce a pressure delta between the block and cooling system though. Some engines rely on the thermostat blockage and the mechanical pump to have a slightly higher block pressure to prevent cavatation hence not always straight forward to retrofit. Some electrical issues can also make cooking the engine is possiblility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom