I can't see that the Oil Cooler "access" will be better when you are doing a R&R of the Water Pump, unless one intends on removing the front standard of the cooler. I would not remove the front standard, unless it was leaking at its connection to the engine. The most common failure is cooler oil rings that seal cooler barrel to front and rear standards. They fail from that close and constant exhaust manifold heat exposures. Turbo happy drivers and constantly high EGT driving accelerates that o-ring failure. If the front standard is not leaking then typically one can remove the rear standard and change o-rings pretty fast. You will know if it's an o-ring issue, they will be brittle like crackers when you pull them off.
Since there is potential oil/water cross over maybe a different approach could be flush and detergent clean the cooling system last, flush the detergent out repeatedly and use the last flush cycle with distilled water, drain the water down out of the RAD and top it up with 4 gallons of concentrate coolant. And B finished after a proactive oil change.
You are smart to know to reduce torque in a "wet" torque application. NC threads will typically go 40% over set point with Lube, 60% over set point with NF threads.
This predictable constant can be a negative, or used as positive for a given application. It's a factor in my work where we have to torque large fasteners in very tight quarters, too small for a long, like a 3/4" drive torque wrench. We use a small torque multiplier, and small torque wrench on lubed fastener threads to produce big small area torque, torque that can be acceptably quantified in a build report for a large rotor, typically 100K# + in weight.
