Water Pump Replacement Question
 

I have a very low mileage 04 Boxster that has never had a water pump replacement. It has had the IMS but the owner did not have the pump replaced at that time which would have made sense. I have been told that because the pump blade is plastic and not metal it is possible for one of the blades to break because of brittleness over the 11 year time period. The car is used only in the summer for short trips. Some of my friends have said that you can watch the gauge and/or look for leakage to assess a replacement. I am anal and am inclined to be on the safe side and spend the $1000 price tag now. What do Forum members recommend?

I have the same car...
 

...I bought her in 2015.

I immediately changed the water pump.

It was fine.

BUT, it should be changed every four years.

Just do it.

:cheers:

There can be indicators it's worn but could be to late at that point, plus you would have to check all the time.
I replaced after 14 years 95k miles. It was fine
Good time to change Coolant and low temp thermostat
$1000 is a shop doing it
DIY $300+/- for WP, Thermo and Porsche coolant.
I used a UView vacuum filler $80

I bought my '01 base 3 years ago and that was the first thing I did.
(also a new serpentine belt of course)

Do it.
Waiting until there are signs of failure of the water pump in these engines is a bad idea. Very bad idea. ...yes many people can tell you stories of how many years/miles they got "and it was still good". I bet most owners can get 15,000 miles out of their oil "and its still good". Doesn't make it a good idea.
One Thousand Dollars? Is that the one with gold plating on the inside? ...or does the labor include removing the entire engine and cleaning it with a fine bristle brush?
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1509105501.jpg

And even the prices you posted are too high, the factory water pump retails at $244.64 from a dealer.

And no metal impeller!

Would you buy this one......Maybe or Maybe not!

https://www.1aauto.com/porsche-911-boxster-engine-water-pump/i/1aewp00104?f=541496&y=2004&utm_campaign=gb_csv_br& utm_content=EWP&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4t6KvKCR1wIVCgaG Ch3L4w8WEAQYBSABEgLrBvD_BwE

Absolutely not a chance! We have seen this metal impeller Chinese knock off pump selling for as little as $35, and it is junk.

My experience is that after replacing the original factory pump you will have do the job every year or two simply due to leaking of the replacement pump. I have been using OEM...

My pump failed quite catastrophically a few years ago (at apx 30k mi). As I was afraid of pieces throughout my cooling system, I had it flatbed-bedded to my Porsche shop where they did a fairly through tear down and clean of the cooling system...as well as a new pump. Point is...if I would have been proactive, I could have just paid for the pump (and labor), rather than the added expense of the cleaning. Lesson learned I guess....at the cost of a few thousand dollars.

Additionally, I had no readily apparent signs of failure before pump blew...just an awful sound that I thought was the IMS. Speaking of learning a lesson, a year later I proactively replaced the IMS...a few thousand to replace what turned out to be a pristine bearing with the LN IMS. Point here is...I replaced a good bearing with a better one just for piece of mind (and I probably would have done so even if I knew the bearing to be replaced was good).

We use only the factory part, and our customers typically get 30-40K miles out of them without issue. We have also had customers that used aftermarket parts, some of which only lasted months rather than years.............

I had a indie do my previous 986. He gave me a choice of rebuilt or OEM. I chose rebuilt since he had 1 yr warranty on parts and labor. 3 months later the rebuilt pump started to leak. They replaced at no cost to me and few years later it’s still going. So with aftermarket or rebuilt you really don’t know what you’re getting.

Thanks all for your advice. I made an appointment on next Friday to have the pump replaced at the dealer in Fort Collins.