holes behind the water pump

[tommyleea]

1953 flathead..Installing the water pumps, and noticed there are two large holes in the block where the pumps mount. I can see that the top hole is where the impeller enters the block. The other hole toward the bottom doesn't appear to have a purpose. This hole is just blocked off by the water pump. Any idea why this hole is in the block?

[51 MERC-CT]

So the casting sand has an added point of egress.

[tommyleea]

Originally Posted by 51 MERC-CT

So the casting sand has an added point of egress.

OK... Thanks.

[rotorwrench]

FoMoCo likely used vibrating shakers to help break up the sand cores inside the block after they came out of the core box at the Ford foundry. Even though they went through a fairly thorough process of removing the core sand, a lot of it still remained inside the block.

When I rebuilt the motor in my Pop's old 51 Merc, the Redi-Strip guy captured near a whole coffee can (full size) full of core wire and sand and this was after my brother had already removed a lot of sand and core wire thinking someone had sabotaged it while he was doing a valve job on it back in 1971 in a High School mechanics class. This car had been driven all over the country and up into the Rocky Mountains on more than one occasion without any major overheating problems. I think my Pop only replaced one water pump the whole time we used the car as a family car. We had the radiator rodded out after we found the sand & wire the first time and it just had the normal crud that you would see after 100K miles & 20 years of use.

[JSeery]

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It can be rather shocking the amount of junk you can clean out of a block that has already been rebuilt several time (and tanked and cleaned with every rebuild)!