Wow! great article. Is the A-342 actually available for purchase? If so I would go that way. The data speaks for itself. And I want one for my car too. A prior owner put a pair of "pusher' fans on my car with a thermostatic switch, but that feels like a bandaid.
The water pump on a car is essentially a centrifugal pump, no different conceptually than you might see on a pool filter or hot tub. Flow increases with speed, but pressure decreases. For that pump to work efficiently there needs to be a smooth transition from the eccentric cavity out to the volute and the clearance between the impeller and housing is also important to develop pressure, and therefore flow, at low speeds. By extending the space on the backside of the pump (creating too much clearance) and misaligning the volute to the impeller (obstruction to smooth fluid flow) it is bound to have poor flow. Zero flow at idle is shocking, but it explains a lot. Ford should have done something like this in the first place when adding the spacer to the T-bird.
I've been around a lot of industrial centrifugal pumps in my career and I don't recall ever seeing a two-sided impeller. I would think they would be common in the industry if it was an effective solution... Conceptually is sounds like it addresses the too large of a clearance issue caused by the spacer, but not the volute flow transition, so it may help some. Are there similar flow graphs for it to look at the difference in performance for this pump vs stock?? Has anyone with some spare time and money tried to see if they can both fit on the engine without interference? What does THAT flow graph look like?
