Just thought i'd share this with you all My old water pump on my 302 went bad. I have a cheap serpentine belt conversion (just used the pulleys off an '85 merc grand marquis and use the alternator to tension), and my old water pump was spaced a little bit incorrectly. So...i had them pull up a water pump for an '85 merc Grand Marquis at Autozone and they gave me this pretty aluminum one (well, it was pretty before i painted it too, take my word for it): Personally i think it looks a lot better, it saves at least 10 pounds on the front of the engine, and best of all it's life time warranty It probably won't work for those of you with A/C or P/S (there's none of the mounting holes the original had), and i'm going to have to make a spacer for the alternator mount, but all in all i'm happy with it.
I thought that those used different fan bolt spacing as well. Does your stock fan and spacer fit? I know the very first SBFs used aluminum pumps as well. 221-289, until 65 or 66. The only thing you need to run those pumps on our cars is a radiator with the lower hose on the other side. The pumps are dirt cheap from A/Z or Advance (20 something bux). They have alternator bosses, and use our fan bolt pattern and pulleys. The timing cover is not scalloped like the later pumps, but I think that is no problem as long as the pump has a back cover. The 289 Hipo aluminum pump does not have a rear cover, so that one would need a 'non-scalloped' timing cover. Just some thoughts. Dave
