TL;DR - a four hour job took three days because finding parts quickly is hard, and apparently shipping a usable gasket is harder.
Oh man. Drove the ol'
Cayman
a few hours north to visit family this weekend, and a couple miles into the journey home I heard a little "pop" sound from behind me followed by complete loss of power steering and an alternator warning in the dash. Thankfully, my older brother has a lift in his garage - we hauled it over there and tore it apart to find the pulley had sheared right off the water pump. It managed to come to rest against the firewall, so I get to keep a trophy at least. I was hoping it was just a snapped drive belt, but the factory pump finally decided to give up the ghost at
almost
exactly 90k miles. Oddly, there were no symptoms before the failure. No weird noises, no temp fluctuations, no obvious coolant leaks. There were signs of slight seepage on the pump housing, but the undertray was bone dry and my levels never changed noticeably. Maybe a couple ounces came out at most.
Managed to source a decent-looking aftermarket pump from NAPA on short notice, as well as a few gallons of appropriate Zerex G40 coolant and a drive belt (don't hurt me, I was desperate and it was the only thing I could get in <1 day while shopping on a weekend. At least the casting looks OK and the impeller is plastic so if it fails it won't gouge my block). Of course, after getting the old pump out we found out the gasket shipped with the new pump had been smushed and slightly cracked around the outlet on the bottom of the pump. Didn't see it through the packaging. Shout out to Porsche Indianapolis for hooking me up with an OEM gasket on short order and saving the (next) day.
And a shout out to this forum for all the helpful old posts about DIY-ing the job. I used the "clamp the hoses and pray" method, which after tucking them up where they wouldn't drip too much resulted in only losing about ~2.5 gallons of coolant. I ended up not even removing the other main coolant line on the driver's side of the engine, just the line that goes into the pump itself and the big one below it (I believe heater and radiator sends, respectively). In and out wasn't too fiddly - you'll need an M8 triple-square to get the grab bar off to access the front engine panel, but otherwise it was all 10mm hex and some Torx bits. A small 1/4" drive torque wrench is also handy as the bolts on the pump are only like ~7.5 lb/ft and it's a tight fit. As mentioned in some of the older DIY posts, two of the bolts are a bit longer than the others, so have a way to keep track of them. I used a larger magnetic part tray and laid them out in order there.
FWIW I found it easier to get the pump back in from below to avoid scraping / bending the gasket trying to wedge it in through the access panel. And I found the most efficient way to get the new drive belt on without a helper was to route it around everything but the idler right next to the tensioner, crank down on the tensioner while sitting behind the passenger seat, and wedge it on with my left hand.
Bleeding the system went better than anticipated - I've heard conflicting reports on this, but since we only drained ~half the coolant it was relatively simple. Opened the bleeder valve on the expansion tank, filled coolant directly into expansion tank until the level in the trap door filler read minimum, closed everything but the breather, and fired it up. Idled a couple minutes, topped up to full via trap door, repeat, then held at about 2k RPM for a few minutes with occasional revs up to 3k. The car was level on the lift at this point, so no angling the back end up to use gravity as an aid.
No mess from the bleeder valve and the whole bleeding operation took maybe 30 minutes before I was able to do a quick test drive and verify temps were stable. I'm sure if I'd decided to drain the whole thing it would've been much more painful without a vacuum system at hand.
I did mine 3 or 4 years ago. It went in my driveway so I ordered parts on line. Install experience was similar to yours. What amazes me is how such small torque and a metal gasket does not leak.
Yeah, I'm still paranoid about that. Doesn't help that the cheapo torque wrench I got didn't have much of an audible click when hitting the specified torque. It's holding though, a couple hundred miles later. From what I can see with it on the ground with a flashlight, it was bone dry when I checked it on my lunch break and topped up what's hopefully that last little bit of coolant (was right in the middle of the range after driving it all the way back home and running some errands besides).
I'm gonna get it in for pads, rotors, and a brake fluid flush
next
week so I'll have them take a peek while it's up in the air just to be sure. Had I planned the water pump replacement, I may have tried tackling that myself although working on my own brakes scares the crap out of me given the whole "messing something up could kill me or others" thing.
Also gonna have them take a smoke machine to the intake tract. If you goose it from idle it sounds like a blow-off valve, though I can't trace it by myself. Don't have a smoke machine or a stick long enough to work the throttle while crouched over the engine. Best I can tell, it's somewhere between the throttle body and intake runners. AOS hoses are a likely culprit, but who knows at this point.
Brakes are relaxing, fun and a chance to listen to some blues. IMO, chasing air bubbles, especially in heater cores is a worse job, I've never used a vacuum device because the last time I did a water pump it was a simple radiator butterfly valve affair. Which were all kinds of fun if they had even a smidgen of corrosion, it was way safer to use the lower hose. Good job on the pumps fellas, definitely a big savings.
Thanks - I'd actually had my usual indie quote me one and it was about 1k more than I spent on parts, coolant, and tools so you ain't kidding.
As for brakes, I've
helped
on brake jobs before, both drum and disc. Disc brakes aren't horrible to do, but I don't trust myself enough to ensure I'm not going to mess something up and cause an accident unless I've got someone else to check everything over. Maybe I'm just overly paranoid on that front 🤷♂️
That said drum brakes can suck it. Not relevant to this conversation or our cars, but those springs on the shoes were forged deep in the bowels of hell.
Great job,
@immerohnegott
!!! I've hated working on brakes, but I'm getting better at it over time. In fact, on my BMW E30, I just redid both my master and slave cylinders for the clutch (which share the same reservoir as the brakes). One of the most fiddly and difficult jobs I've ever done (especially in the cold), but the E30 is back on the road. One of the things that made it easier was borrowing my friend's Motive brake bleeder -- and that was a true game changer. (Just wish my scooters/motorcycles would work with it!) I've learned that nothing builds one's confidence like doing a major repair and then successfully driving a ton of miles afterwards.
Knowing you aren't comfortable with a given job is wisdom typing sir.
... I took my truck to have all the suspension inspected because messing with any of it means an alignment anyhow and I'm out of the ball joint business.
PS Drums are difficult and if the spring lets go it's like a bullet. I did the Escape but next time I won't.
Many thanks! Honestly, if it weren't for being stranded away from home and the issues getting workable parts I'd have been done in less than a day and had a lot less stress over it. Compared to an internal chain-driven pump this thing was easy-peasy.
Amen to that. And with suspension there's some tooling required. Sure, there are manual presses for ball joints and stuff, but the hydraulic dudes are
so much better.
Assuming they can be pressed out in the first place, which seems to be getting less common in my experience. In the latter case, just replacing a whole control arm assembly isn't too bad, though like you said you'd still have to wiggle and swerve it in for an alignment anyway after eyeballing it at home.
