Water Pump Packing: Bringing a Car Out of Long-Term Storage

When we did our early assessment on our car that we're bringing back from long-term storage, we had noticed that the water pump was leaking near the front. In a lot of cases, you see a leaky water pump, you assume you automatically have to replace it. Well, cars of 1940s, depending on the model or make of car, about 1940s and earlier, they used to use a water pump that had what they called a packing nut on the end. And what this is, is in order to have the shaft go into the water jacket, but in order to make that seal so the water didn't go past the bearings or bushings here and follow the shaft hub, they used to use what they called a rope packing. And what this is, this is a graphite impregnated sort of a, it is a rope kind of material that wraps around, multiple wraps around the shaft. Then, this packing nut actually presses against this material. So, you'll have multiple wraps. Sometimes, guys like to cut them one at a time and stack wraps. I prefer to just put a 45 on the end and then put multiple wraps on. But then, the packing nut serves to press this against the shaft and create the seal to prevent water coming out. It's not a perfect process. As time goes by, the packing tends to dry out. Also, just the wear from the rotating shaft will start to wear the inside of the packing. But the way the packing nut works is you can just go in here and tighten this packing nut to get it to stop leaking. And normally, what you do after you've freshly packed, you can take the water pump off, put a new set of packing in it. And you don't tighten it up completely right away. What you do is you put antifreeze in your engine and it'll leak a little bit and you just kind of tighten it up 'til it stops leaking. Then, you start your engine and you watch it and you just kind of, as the engine's running, you keep making sure that, see if it's dripping at all. If it's dripping, then go ahead and tighten the packing a little bit more until it stops leaking, and then you're set. In time, maybe one or two times during the summer, you might have to come back and just give it a little more tension to seal that up again. And eventually, over time, you'll tighten that nut to the point where it's all the way bottomed out and it's still leaking. That's when you know it's time to take that water pump back off, repack it, and you'll be ready to go again.