First road trip with my 69 charger (Gone wrong)

[ChargerST]

Check your water neck and water pump housing. Those should be cast iron but might have been replaced by aluminum versions. Had a small water neck leak once that eventually resulted in a large coolant loss. Problem was that it was an aluminum piece that was eaten away by electrolysis under the paint. It looked almost normal from the outside but after scraping the paint of it looked like swiss cheese on the inside... go figure

 

[1967coronet]

Speaking of the AC pulley set......
Try to rotate it by hand like you checked the alternator and power steering pump.
Another question.... did you happen to run the AC before things broke ?
That noise you heard may have belts trying to spin a locked AC pump.

 

[Richard Cranium]

@Richard Cranium I know your a 68 guy but do you know if that clutch/pulley is normal on a Charger?

Here's a picture of my old '68. The clutch is visible on the compressor......

 

[CHARGERSTEVEN]

Check all your belts closely to see if any pieces are missing as this could of cause a leak in rad by hitting the fins and tubes n caused a pin hole leak,did you smell rubber burning as this would indicate a belt burning from something seizing up.Check the adjuster to make sure its working properly n that you had the rite adjustment.

 

[R413]

Check your water neck and water pump housing. Those should be cast iron but might have been replaced by aluminum versions. Had a small water neck leak once that eventually resulted in a large coolant loss. Problem was that it was an aluminum piece that was eaten away by electrolysis under the paint. It looked almost normal from the outside but after scraping the paint of it looked like swiss cheese on the inside... go figure

View attachment 1178650

This is backwards. 1969 had aluminum water necks. The last year of the cast iron water neck was 1966 and it was angled forward at the top outlet. Then sometime in the mid to late 70’s they started with the cast iron again.

 

[R413]

Check the bottom crank pulley. Make sure the bolts are tight and it is not wobbling. Same with the harmonic balancer, make sure it is tight. It seems like you are always in a hurry. Just take more the 3 minutes to spin the pulleys, check for play or side wobble.

 

[Michael_]

Thanks for all the tips i will check asap.
Its raining for the next couple days so i probably wont be able to work on the car before friday since i have no indoor space.

I started looking for a barn or something similar to store and work on my vehicles about a week ago.
But i live in the german california and my budget is limited. Will see how that turns out.

It seems like you are always in a hurry.

Often i just got a few hours in the morning or evening to work on the car.
It also seems like its always tending to rain when i need to work on the car.

Hopefully i can fix that by finding affordable indoor space. Maybe i need to build a garage but it will still be expensive and small since
i'm living in a relatively big city and in germany everything's smaller by default.

 

[moparvinson]

Could one of your belts have damaged your upper radiator hose?

 

[Michael_]

Today i did some further inspection and found out whats going on.

I filled destilled water in the radiator (which was basically empty) and as soon as i did it was starting to leak out again.
I was able to see that it leaks at the bottom of the water pump, pretty much in the middle and significantly.
It appears that it only leaks there and nowhere else. Both with or without the engine running!

I was real lucky since i was driving 40 minutes after i have already seen SOME coolant in the engine bay (but not so much).
It really wasn't leaking all that bad until i shut it off when i got back home!

Do you think the water pump is shot or maybe just the housing or gasket?

Also:

While i can easily spin the alternator, ac compressor and power steering pump pulleys by hand, i noticed that
the power steering pulley appears to be somewhat bent. (See picture, but looks worse in person).
Its also misaligned with the crank pulley at the bottom of the engine.

So i suspect there are two possibilities that could explain what happened:
1.Water Pump leaked down to the crank pulley, belts slipped out of the pulley due to being wet and finally snaped off.
2.Power steering belt slipped out of the pulley due to pulley being bent causing all the belts to snap off as a chain reaction
2.1.But maybe the pulley bent when the belts snaped off?

I got a NOS water pump, a new gasket and a rebuilt water pump housing already.

I will order these belts ASAP:

7590 This is the A/C & alt so you need two of them..

7360 This is the W/P belt which you still have but replace it anyway...

7425 This is the P/S belt..

Just trying to figure out what to do about the bent power steering pulley before placing an order.

This seems to be a somewhat bigger job which requires removing the radiator, shroud, fan, clutch etc. and i do not want to do it twice.

Also this is some of the coolant that came out of the overflow hose:

I think it looks pretty good?
Trying to figure out if i should flush the cooling system with some chemical cleaner before installing my new radiator or not.
The current radiator seems fine but its not the correct one and so the fan shroud is currently held on with
adapters at the top and zipties at the bottom. (Which sucks)

Could one of your belts have damaged your upper radiator hose?

Doesn't really look like it cut through but i got a new upper and lower radiator hose, anyway.

 

[CHARGERSTEVEN]

That power steering pulley can be removed n straightened,n that coolant colour looks rusty to me,clean n replace

 

[SlinktRR]

I would take that PS pump out and check the pulley and shaft. It looks like a Saginaw with the nut that holds the pulley on, so very easy to remove/replace. But it could also be the shaft on the pump, in which case you can just replace the whole pump which you can get from various vendors like classic industries.