26702 Thrust Washer is another part that we have been asked to manufacture due to poor items in the official supply chain.
Part number 26702 is a thrust washer that is used on the water pump impeller on the 365 GT2+2. The critical face on this part should be ground and ideally lapped to a fine surface finish to allow the ceramic seal to make good contact and make sure a good seal is achieved. If you have a look at the photograph below you will see what one of these parts looks like after many years of wear (Part on right). You can see the annular grooves that have been worn into the face after many millions of revolutions ( this is quite normal and to be expected over many years.
The part on the left shows a re-manufactured part that we sourced through the official supply chain and to our horror the surface finish is far from acceptable for the ceramic seal to run on. We could quite easily see that the finish had a large amount of what is known as " bounce" where the surface grinding wheel has basically bounced over the surface that is being ground.
If this part is fitted to the car it would be highly unlikely that the surface of the thrust washer would seal against the ceramic and the ceramic seal would also be prone to premature wear due to the course finish of the surface. For Hill Engineering this is one of those simple fixes where not only do we produce the part correctly, we also use updated materials to what was available when these parts were originally made.
