I am actually kind of confused about the whole pump/tube reservoir thing, speciffically about where and how it should be mounted. maybe someone can explain this to me.
Basic rule is: Reservoir before pump, and positioned in such a way that when you fill coolant
into the res while the system is off, it flows into the pump on its own. Then you can turn on
the pump and keep on adding coolant to the res until you have a steady flow of coolant
(you'll most likely still have lots of bubbles in your loop at this point, nothing to worry about,
just let it run for a few hours until they've bled into the reservoir). The reason for needing
the coolant to flow into the pump is that the pumps used in W/C (usually) don't have suction,
they can only push the water out of their outlet, but can't actually suck in into their inlet
(in a closed loop, the water is being pushed back in by the water that's pushed out the
other end, obviously), so as long as the loop isn't filled you need a little help from gravity.
That's basically it. You can position the two components pretty much anywhere in your
loop, doesn't really matter. Some people will recommend having the res as the highest
point in the loop to make it easier for air to accumulate there, but I've never had a problem
with a loop where that wasn't the case, so I'd put tidiness before that.
