88 302 w/AOD on craigslist

[daveSanborn]

If you look at the back of the water pumps, a lot of them just have round holes in the location of the different shaped water passages. All in all, any combination will work as long as the gasket seals and the water pump bolts to the cover. To me, it is more important to match you fuel pump and dipstick locations because as you see, the reverse rotation cover must have a elec. fuel pump.

I'm with you Pete. I'm not using the "correct" reverse rotation timing cover on my '66, but I'm using a reverse rotation WP and the stock 5.0 serp. belt system. Everything works fine and even sitting in traffic on a hot day I rarely break 190. It's my belief that the reverse rotation timing cover optimizes water flow with a reverse rotation water pump.

you can't successfully just bolt in a standard w/p and have it work correctly. The impeller wouldn't move any water if it was spinning the wrong direction.

Completely true.... that's where I intended to go with this all along, but we got side-tracked talking about darn timing covers and I forgot all about it. Traditionally, serpentine belt = reverse rotation and V-belt = standard rotation. Serp. systems can be "rigged" to work.

 

[66gt350]

The one that I took off the wife's 89 GT looked like RTCF-302D, not RTCF-351RF.

 

[RapidRabbit]

Not sure how to tell the difference between the water pumps.

This is the stock water pump that came off the engine.

And this is what's on it now.

 

[AzPete]

According to your other pictures, it would be a reverse flow on the engine now. It is set up to run on the flat side of the belt. The belt would do an inverted "S" around the pump and crank.

As for the one off the engine, you could look into the area of the impeller and compare to the one on the engine. The impeller blades run the opposite ways between the two different flow directions.

I have been thru this with two engines in the last 5 years.......sometimes it becomes a real headache.