I can tell you what worries me... a loose wire or blown fuse can cause a complete failure of the pump, and temps will skyrocket quickly. At least with a crank driven pump the bearings may begin to howl as a warning, and some cooling capacity will remain. Of course there are the total fail possibilities of a mechanical pump as well when serpentine belts shred, but at least the whole cluster lights up.
If the pump stops. That coolant gauge is gonna raise pretty quick
Failure of the mechanical pump or belt will result in the same. Now granted there are more mechanical pumps than electric out there but how many failures have you heard of with electrical pumps compared to mechanical ones? If a wire or fuse goes it is an easy fix. The failure of either a mechanical or electric pump will lead to the same end result.
I'll tell you why I think the upside to having electric outweighs any fears you may have.
The are pretty darn dependable and I've never had one go out, can't say the same for mechanicals. Granted I've had many more mechanicals than electric but I've had at least a dozen without incident.
If your belt goes out, which will tend to happen more with superchargers, you can still drive the car as long as the battery will last without overheating. I drove almost 50 miles without a belt one time, but I made it to the next town where I needed to get help.
When your car is idling in traffic with no air flow over the radiator, the pump remains at full capacity flowing a ton more coolant than a mechanical at 700 rpms. My temp factory temp gauge needle used to sit right in the middle of the gauge. Since going with the Meziere it never gets to that point. It always is at least one notch below that. In fact I have seen my gauge drop while idling in the staging lanes at the track. Why, because you have the max amount of coolant flowing at all times.
For you track guys. You can run the pump and high-speed fan without the motor running. This equates to many more runs without running into heat soak issues. It takes about 20 minutes between runs with no drop off in ET due to heat issues.
And you get the benefit of less parasitic loss due to the accessory or serpentine belt. It does take a bit of force to pump that water. Squeezing every bit of power out of your car is the goal of some of you guys out there so I think this is a no brainer.
So there are many pluses to running an electric over a mechanical. The only fear you guys have is of failure which I think is more prone to the mechanical than the electric but either way it is way outweighed by the benefits. And as far as reliability I have never witnessed a failure. I daily my car with the Meziere in the high desert heat of Las Vegas and run the AC most of that time. I beat my car like a red headed step child too. No issues.
