Water Pump Longevity

[piper6909]

Originally Posted by 78F350

I've been avoiding this thread due to all the happy and optimistic posts that it started out with. I don't care to argue online with people who are already satisfied and secure in their knowledge.

I totally agree with Rick and the others who said to replace it as preventative maintenance. Like an IMS failure, a catastrophic water pump failure is statistically unlikely to happen to your car. Like an IMS failure, a catastrophic water pump failure can ruin your engine. It is a lot easier and less expensive to replace a water pump regularly than it is to replace an IMS. Why not do it?

My experience with it is a little more extreme than most cases, but you can read about plenty of problems on Rennlist and other sites if you look around. I bought a cheap Boxster that had lots of issues and had probably been using dirty pond water for coolant. The water pump looked like this when I replaced it:



The engine did not overheat, but it seemed to have a hot-spot in the cooling passages that would build pressure and cause coolant to vent out the over-pressure valve in the tank. I tried various means of flushing the engine, short of disassembly and replaced the oil cooler. It didn't work. In the end, I decided to push the engine to failure rather than put more time and money into it. It has now reached that state and I'm pretty sure it has a cracked head.

WOW! How many were miles on it? My 2002 original pump with 92K miles looked perfect (aside from very slight play, that's why I changed it.)

[pilut2]

Originally Posted by piper6909

WOW! How many were miles on it?

I'm not sure if your "Wow" comment was related to the good pump or 78F350's knarly one- my beautiful looking pump was 20 years old but the car only has 42,000 miles on it- this was the original pump and likely the original coolant too. I'm glad that I switched it out- but I think that it had a bit of life left in it, maybe another 20 years (lol).

[78F350]

Originally Posted by piper6909

WOW! How many were miles on it? My 2002 original pump with 92K miles looked perfect (aside from very slight play, that's why I changed it.)...]

I don't know how many miles were on it, that engine had been swapped into the car at some point. Most of the eight to ten water pumps I have removed looked as good as yours. One had some slight scrapes on the blades from bearing play, one had clumps of congealed coolant from improper coolant mix. I think they all had the original gasket, so first time changed. Call that a catastrophic failure rate of 10% if left 'till there's a sign of trouble (in my experience). All four IMS bearings I've removed (with over 100k miles on them) have looked great too.