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changing my water pump. a one night job?


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ok, here is the deal. coolant has been leaking for a while, finally tracked it down. its dripping through the timing cover which tells me the water pump gasket/o-ring/other is leaking so i'm gonna just change out the whole thing as it has a crapload of miles on it anyway. this is on a 92 loyale (ea82, mechanical fan attached to water pump shaft). my question is this, barring major disaster and provided i have all the approriate tools, how long should this take me? can an inept mechanic (such as myself) get this done in 3-4 hours or could it be an all-day affair?

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3 to 4 hours seems likely given minor snags..remove the electrical fan it'll make getting that one bolt above the oil filter that holds the center cover in place..everything else is pretty straight forward..the pump is very likely bad as when they leak from a blown main seal it usually drips from the timing belt cover area at the bottom this comes from the hole on the pump at the bottom..take your time and inspect the timing belts while your at it..as you'll have 66.66% of the belt covers off anyways..;)

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thanks for the info. i've done water pumps before on larger cars with huge engine compartments (77 grand am, 78 towncar) and didn't run into much of a problem, of course the pumps are really easy to get to on a big V8 from the late 70s. the t-belts have about 20k on them but if i've had coolant slowly flowing through the casing they might show more wear than normal so thanks for the tip on checking them as well. probably going to go ahead and replace my hoses at the same time since.... why not? i figure less than $100 for all the parts required.

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For sure you could do it on a day. I did the water pump on my wife's 91 Century (transvers mounted 3.3 v6) in one day and I've never ever done more than change the oil on that thing. Between that job and a Subaru water pump I'd say the Subaru water pump is even easier :)

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curses!

 

all was going well. fan was off, water pump pulley was off, left t-belt cover was off, center t-belt cover bolts were out....... wait, this goes around the crank shaft pulley? ok. i'll take the pulley off then. its just one bolt after all. i'll just grab my largest metric socket (19mm) and put it on there...... its 3mm too small?!?!??! CRAP!

 

so i had to put it all back together and forget about doing this myself... at least right now. i was going to have to remove the AC compressor too in order to get to the water pipe anyway and i wasn't counting on that either. so its back to watching the temp gauge and keeping the radiator topped off until i can get it into a shop

 

the good news is that the pump turned ok and there was no moisture at the weep holes so i'm thinking my pump is ok and its just the gasket thats sprung a small leak inside the t-belt casing. its not leaking real fast... about a quart a week at this rate but i know it will keep getting faster over time. so i'm no worse off than when i started which is always good (except for the skinned knuckles, stupid radiator getting in my way when removing fan blade)

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holy crap i hate transverse mounted engines! how many hours do you mean by "a day"?

All day :( Prolly 10AM till 7PM heh. I had to go find and buy parts all over the metro area that day too.

 

Sorry to hear you ran into some snags. Does yoru AC still even work? I removed all of mine since it was out of coolant. Grab that larger socket for the crank pulley and you should be set.

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Does yoru AC still even work? I removed all of mine since it was out of coolant.

mine needs a little bit of repair, but still kinda works. i always just drive with the windows down even in cars that have AC though. what size belts to you need to run if you get rid of the AC compressor? any significant wiring changes that have to be made?

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That crank pulley bolt is 22 MM.. There are a few different tricks to getting it of.. One I learned from GD recently was to pull a spark plug and fill a cylinder with rope.. that will stop the motor from turning over when you reef on that bolt.. works like a charm

 

 

 

PS.. one of my first posts was asking what the hell is up with the crank pulley being in the way of the water pump!!?!!;)

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