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Had my WP go about 7 years ago, at about 58K miles---before I was aware that WP failures were a fairly common occurrence with these cars. For a day or two prior to the failure I thought I had noticed a "warm" smell that I should have recognized as coolant. There was no readily noticeable leakage (ie nothing on the garage floor), just enough to smell as it heated up on the engine surface. Then, suddenly, a clatter as the impeller blades came in contact with the block.
When I got the pump out and could see the damage, I'd estimate (IIRC) maybe 25% of the impeller blade surface area was missing. I flushed and flushed and flushed, placing a wire mesh colander under there to filter out anything that came out. I never saw even the tiniest amount of plastic, so I gave up. Put the new WP in, along with a new thermostat, serp belt and ("while I was there") motor mount. That was almost 40k miles ago---no cracked head problems to date, so I'm thinkin I'm safe.
As an aside, I talked with the head technician at Steinel's Autowerk's, a local place that does a LOT of P-car work. He said that in such a case several years before my WP failure they'd done the same thing (back-flushing) with the same result. He said they don't even bother flushing them anymore, and have had no issues. Not to say it couldn't potentially be a problem in some cases, but an interesting observation from someone at a place that has done LOTS of WPs.
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