4.1 Eldorado powerplant

[darsdoug]

I recently puchased a 1985 Eldorado Coupe from a local used GM dealer. The clock say's approx. 9000 miles so I imagine it has around 209,000 miles judging from the amount of sludge clinging to the front motor mounts. I'd say it's 3/4" thick. Anyhow, getting to the point...the water pump started leaking continuously from the seep hole in the housing while my daughter was driving it on the freeway. She mentioned the power steering went out at the same time. She stopped and got water and brought the car here to my home. Upon initial inspection I assumed the coolant slinging around had caused the belts to slip and thus, the power steering problem. I spent about eight hours replacing the water pump and belts due to the fact everything had to be moved out of the way to replace the pump and then bolted back in place. I'm talking air conditioning compressor, alternater, brackets, harmonic balancer pulley, etc. I did a great job on it (no coolant leaks) and it runs just fine but the power steering pump has seemed to have failed. In theory I would say since the power steering pump is bolted up flush against the aluminum-iron alloy block there on the left bank of the engine the heat transfer when she got it hot was a bit more than it could take. I had to drill a hole big enough in the power steering pulley to get a socket and extension through to access the two 15mm bolts securing the pump to the block (I didn't have a puller handy) only to discover the threads in the block were stripped out for the bottom bolt. I tracked down another metric bolt with a 1/2" more reach and cured that problem. I often wonder who thought of bolting those directly to the block?