Water Pump Replacement Tip

For those of you who will wind up replacing your water pump, the DIYs everywhere indicate that you should drop the pump down to remove it and slide the new pump up and in to install it. After wrestling with the old pump for half an hour to drop it, even after loosening the hard line that blocks the pump, I noticed that if you remove the idler pulley nearest the water pump, it's much easier to remove and replace the water pump from the top. With the idler pulley out, the new pump drops right in, and you're much less likely to bugger the new gasket than by trying to stuff it in from below. Hope this helps someone. Also, wear gloves when you're cutting out the previous gasket - I have blue painter's tape holding the ends of several fingers shut today...

I can empathize with this. I ended up taking out the thermostat housing and that freed up the room I needed to drop the water pump, but the idler pulley would have been a good idea, as I ended up needing to replace the T-stat gasket as well since I removed the housing. Those gaskets are razor sharp, I could see how you could open up a finger or 10 without gloves. DS

Has anyone found it possible to reuse the gasket? I agree. I can hardly stand working on anything w/o gloves. I have also found that one of these helps while doing oil/fluid changes:

The gasket has a crush ridge - presumably it is permanently deformed when the water pump is bolted into place. I'll look at my old gasket tonight and see if this seems to be true or if I'm just blowing smoke. I'm a big fan of reusing parts, but I wouldn't reuse this one because (a) it appears to be designed for single-use, and (b) it's a tremendous pain in the a$$ to get on and off... getting everything bolted back up and then finding out that I have a leak because I cheaped out on the gasket would SUCK.

I know the old gaskets a PITA to cut so I was just curious if using a quality sealant would enable you to leave it as is and not have leaks. I might try this as an experiment if no one else has. Hope your healing OK.

Heh. Thanks - I think I have more scar tissue than fingerprint at this point, so a couple more won't matter.

You cannot reuse the gasket, or at least I couldn't. When I removed the T-stat housing I tried to reuse that gasket and it started dripping and never had before, so had to replace with a new one. So, nope, gaskets are not reusable, at least not mine.

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Does this mean that if I remove the idler pulley and remove the water pump from the top I can skip the steps for removing the engine bracket below it? How about if I'm also replacing the thermostat and housing?

Mine was reused, but not in the typical sense. I used the old gasket to trace the outline with bolt holes on a piece of cardboard, then punched holes & stuck the bolts in them to keep track of the positions (some are different lengths). The two piece gasket that came with the new pump didn't seal correctly and a new gasket wasn't available locally. I had a friend's rack tied up, so I fished the old gasket out of the trash and traced the pattern on a piece of Felpro gasket material & with some feminine assistance, exacto knife, nail scissors, and 15 minutes time a new gasket was born, which worked perfectly.

Mine would not come out the top even with the idler pulley removed. It had to come out the bottom. I saw a similar tip at the time and tried and tried to get it out the top. No joy. I was eventually able to get it out the bottom after removing the hardline and thermostat housing.

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Thanks for the reply.

Mine also came out from the bottom once I removed the thermostat. If I remember right, the engine support bracket got in the way and I had to move the bracket as close to the rear of the car as possible to make clearance (with the engine supported by a jack). For coolant flush tips, I had a write up here https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...pump-tips.html

Also replace all the bolts. They are cheap to buy I somehow torqued the head off of 1 at 7 ftlbs