Water pump - replace?

[wherebee]

So I bought a crappy old car as a runaround - we do less than 5000km a year going on use so far, so it doesn't need to be good.

Anyway, the water pump bangs like a whore house door some days, and silent others.  Is that an 'replace immediately' or a 'nah, wait until it breaks' kind of issue?

 

 

[wherebee]

got it done the other week, for a very low price.  They tuned the rest of the car as well.

 

win!

[Rave]

I wouldn't wait until it breaks, because when it does it'll throw the belt, or piss out all the coolant, or cause the engine to overheat, or some combination of the three. I've only done one water pump but it was an easy enough DIY job even though I had to unbolt the engine and drop it down on a jack to get enough clearance to get the old pump out and the new one in. A pump that's driven by the cambelt rather than the aux belt will obviously be considerably more faff.

[MrPin]

Replace it now. The bearings are gone. Obviously make sure it IS the water pump.

[Long time lurking]

On 03/02/2020 at 03:24, wherebee said:

So I bought a crappy old car as a runaround - we do less than 5000km a year going on use so far, so it doesn't need to be good.

Anyway, the water pump bangs like a whore house door some days, and silent others.  Is that an 'replace immediately' or a 'nah, wait until it breaks' kind of issue?

 

 

What make of car would help as there are known problems with some and the consequences of carrying on driving it can be very different as a lot of cars now the water pump is driven by the cam/timing belt ,if yours is and it fails completely it`s game over for the engine

There are plenty of how too`s on youtube for most vehicles , parts are cheap

[Frank Hovis]

I know somebody who was doing Bangernomics of necessity before the term existed.

He only had one rule: on buying immediately book it in to have the cambelt replaced because if that breaks then his car is an immediate write-off and he's just burned £500 that he can't afford to burn.

And when you have the cam belt off it's usually very cheap to have the water pump done at the same time; the below articlae says get the fan belt done as well at the same time which makes sense.

https://www.clickmechanic.com/blog/should-i-replace-the-water-pump-at-the-same-time-as-the-timing-belt/