I know that the water pump is belt driven, so it would be easy to connect it to my bicycle. What I am wondering is if I can pedal fast enough to make it work. Does anyone know how fast I would need to pedal to operate the pump?
Idle speed of car at minimum is around 600 RPM.Too fast to pedal.
Pretty fast. Engines operate at 600-6000 rpm and the pump pulley is a little smaller than the drive pulley, so it is spinning even faster. That said, 600 rpm is plenty fast enough. You can attain that easily by applying pulley to rear tire tread, raising tire off ground and pedaling. To apply bike chain to pulley would give a disappointing water flow.
Mechanical water pumps will move water with any rotation, provided it's a sealed system and there are no obstructions. The flow rate will be determined by the RPM of the water pump. This is proportional to the pulley sizes of the drive pulley to the water pump pulley. 600 RPM for a water pump at idle is sufficient for the cooling system design and the engine heat load at idle. Without knowing the specifics of your application, it would be hard to tell how fast you would need to pedal.
