Water Pump

[mathewmeldrum Member Find all posts View Profile Close mathewmeldrum]

Im going to have a crack at replacing my water pump myself,

just wanted to ask if there was much difference in quality of water pumps?

might as well do it properly and put a better qualility part in, but what should i be looking for?

thanks guys.

[croozza Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close croozza]

Im going to have a crack at replacing my water pump myself,

just wanted to ask if there was much difference in quality of water pumps?

might as well do it properly and put a better qualility part in, but what should i be looking for?

thanks guys.

If your going to the water pump, then you may as well do the timing belt, tensioner, cam seals ect, as they all run off of the timing belt.

[Playdoh96 Member Find all posts View Profile Close Playdoh96]

I would only used genuine, its not that expesive and its a part you dont want to fail prematurely. Much better gasket set up, metal gasket with awesome rubber seal instead of a gasket paper. I would do the belt, tensioner, thermostat, and radiator cap all at the same time. Oh and there's a small bypass hose on the back of the pump. See if you can pick this up as well. It would be a pain in the #++ if you had it leak after.

[mathewmeldrum Member Find all posts View Profile Close mathewmeldrum]

thanks guys

[Brett1979 Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Brett1979]

Hi guys, I replaced my timing belt and water pump myself. A bit of job that's for sure with some hurdles the first time you have a go at it. The kit was aftermarket with a thin gasket for the water pump. I took my time and allowed 24 hrs for the gasket sealant to cure. Anyway, when I put everything back together and filled with coolant, water pump was leaking through the gasket because I suspect I was too lean on the sealant as I didn't want to apply it too thick and have it smear into the internals of the pump. I must admit this annoyed the hell out of me when It happened.

I'm just wondering what the correct procedure is for applying the sealant? I applied it quite thinly on the water pump. Then put the gasket on and pressed it down evenly and lined it up with the bolt holes. Then I applied sealant onto the gasket itself again before fitting it to the block.
I scraped off any remnants of existing gasket and torqued up the bolts opposite to each other a little at a time to 20nm. I even connected the side hose. So the only thing I can think of is I should've applied a thicker cost of sealant. It's Ultra Grey Gasket Maker that I used. Next time I'll check it for leaks before putting everything back together.

PS, as a relatively easy tip for anyone else, I made a Special Serverice Tool (SST) out of a 500mm length of hardwood timber sleeper and fitted two 100mm long M10 bolts through it 75mm apart to fit onto the crank pulley to get the crank bolt tight again. I rested the sleeper on top of the chassis rail. I could only torque it up to 215nm though before running out of strength to torque it up any tighter. But that was friggin tight as it was even bowing my breaker bar to the point that I thought it was going to break. I could hear the oil in my torque wrench getting forced around under the load. I used the starter motor to loosen the crank bolt and that method was really easy and saved heaps of time. Geez that starter's got some torque in it.

And re-fitting the timing belt is tricky when doing it by yourself. Making sure everything is lined up top dead centre while keeping the belt under tension before fitting the tensioner pulley (which takes a bit of strength) can be a frustrating task. It was the trickiest part of the job I found and two helpers at this point wouldn't go astray to keep the cam sprockets from randomly rotating themselves during the belt fitting.