Intercooler water pump
- Thread starter TREX666
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Nice! Were you able to find a point of failure anywhere? I got the “I/C coolant level low” warning about a month ago at 40k miles. Luckily topping off the reservoir made it go away after a few days. Now I have an I/C pump on standby for if and when.
No I didn't. It came on twice only for about 5 seconds when it was 35° in the morning. I just didn't want to take any chances and my extended warranty that I bought covered it. It's very weird how it calculates coolant level. Because there is no level sensor. It uses flow and temperature to calculate it
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I found the point of failure on mine after disassembly. It is the O-ring that is supposed to prevent coolant from entering the bottom half of the unit. It is between the pump portion and the black plastic housing. Coolant entered the electronics and caused the failure. The O-ring is of very poor quality and had metallic particles embedded in it.
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I'll have to pull mine down further and look
Wow, thanks for sharing that info. I spent 13 years as a mechanic so I’m always curious to know the “why”. When I first got the “I/C coolant level low” warning, I checked the fluids and it was just a tiny bit low. I added maybe a half a cup of distilled water to the reservoir, gave it a few days and run cycles and so far the warning hasn’t come back. I couldn’t believe that less than a half cup of water was the problem, especially with something that doesn’t even have a fluid level sensor. I also marked the reservoir fluid level and check it frequently for fluid loss.
On a side note, my local dealers wanted around $800 for a replacement pump. I did find them cheaper online but had to wait almost a month for delivery. Needless to say, I have one “in stock” just in case.
Again, thanks for sharing!
From what I've read stock pumps actually suck (not pump) fluid and that's the reason they are pretty prone to failure. There has to be flow restriction in order for them to get suction which is part of the reason they fail so easily. I'm with @2026TRX and will be going with the FI pump when mine fails. https://fiinterchillers.com/product/hellcat-replacement-intercooler-pump-cwa400/#tab-description
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If your truck is stock, then I would recommend sticking with a factory intercooler pump. Without adjustments to the tune, you'll have a P023(A/B/C) CEL(s). I have the FI Pierburg CWA400, and it works great. I have it wired so it activates with ignition.
This option makes absolute sense to me but I’m not prepared or knowledgeable to go into the engine computer to change the required parameters. If this was a simple bolt on mod, then yes, no question. Maybe the ‘26 TRX will have improved upon this “pump” design.
Thank you for your valued input.
This is sort of a poor way to describe how the factory pump works. Technically, ALL pumps suck fluid, some just do it better than others.
You can just change the routing on the stock pump and add a new tank and get 11gpm. I feed directly out of my 3 gallon FI tank into the pump, eliminated the factory tank, added some larger lines, and got rid of all the extra routing that isn't required.
Now my main restrictions are the heat exchanger and intercooler. I'm going to work up a better intercooler crossover at some point, and I'm waiting on an aftermarket HE to come out in the market, but I think 15gpm would be achievable with the factory pump.
Good info, only other option I've seen on here was the FI setup. How difficult is it to reroute the lines and add an extra tank? Does this improve reliability or is this pump failure really not that common overall?
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None of the line rerouting is likely to change a seal failure on the pump body. That sort of thing just happens sometimes. It's easier than you'd think to clip a seal when assembling the pump, or have an o-ring that isn't quite the correct dimension, or any other number of manufacturing issues.
The two biggest issues I had were flaring the hard lines on the back of the intercooler crossover so I could clamp on larger hose and finding the exact right elbow to drop from the tank into the pump. The second one wasn't that bad, I just ordered like three different ones off Amazon and returned what I didn't use. The first one sucked. I burned through like three different tube flaring tools because they were made for copper, not steel. That's one reason I want to design my own crossover with different fittings, it would make this process MUCH easier on people.
This is the flow on my current setup, a little over 11gpm.
Is this reading with the stock pump and the tank and lines rerouted?
Correct, dumping straight from the tank via an elbow to the pump, then running new lines from pump to HE, HE to IC, and IC to tank. I noticed the other day my elbow is just barely kinked, I need to sort that out but so far no issues with it.
I'm measuring this from the line that returns to the tank, so this is the actual flow rate for the system.
I also tuned to run the IC pump at 100% all the time.
Since you eliminated the factory expansion tank for the supercharger IC system, do you have any sort of pressure relief built in?
No, you don't need anything like that in an intercooler loop. It doesn't get nearly as hot as the engine coolant, so you're nowhere near the boiling point of the water.
If you're running more pressure in the intercooler loop compared to the factory setup, then the boiling point of the coolant would be higher. My concern is not with boiling the coolant but with overpressurizing the intercooler bricks. They're already known to leak but I haven't been able to figure out what the common cause is. The factory cap opens at 5psi so it seems like they intended for the system to maintain minimal pressure. I recall exploding intercooler bricks being an issue with CTS-Vs when eliminating the tee fill port with the pressure cap.
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