General Maintenance & Repairs - Replacing Waterpump

Well my car is acting up. The leaking is getting worse and worse and I found out it's leaking from behind the water pump. Could this just be a bad seal and what not? Also after I take the old one off how do I tell if it is bad or not or just the seal? Plz help I'm doin this tommorow morning sometime. Thanks. Craig

Try replacing just the sells first. If your pump was failing you would probably be having some problems with the car overheating.

Yeah, my car had overheating problems. Was the H20 pump. On the brightside it's cheap and a cake walk to replace. I dunno how to tell about the seals though

If your not having any problems overheating, its most likely just the gaskets.

Yeha it overheats alot. I just tried to go somewhere got 1 mile down the road n it overheated. TOok me an hour to get 2 miles lol and its almost 0 degrees out i was freezin i still cant feel my fingers.

I also haven't really tooken a good look at the waterpump itself. How many hoses are hooked to it? just 1?


I just read on autozone.com u gotta take off the power steering pump and all that is this true i thought the waterpump was by itself n would just come out after u took the bolts off. It also said to take off the coil packs which is unnecessary I think.

Replaced mine 2 wks ago. No big deal. Can be done is less than 2 hrs. The only thing you have to take off is the TB and the belt tensioner. One thing, you might want to do, is cover the alternator with plastic. When you remove the heater hoses, gallons of coolant come flooding over the alternator. Fortunately mine still works. When mine started leaking, it wasn't overheating, so I changed the seals, and it still leaked, so I ended up changing the pump.

Ok well I went to start it this morning and now my car wont even start. It did start for a few seconds n started smokin n screeched really loud. Now it wont start n it screeches. Anybody know what this is. Is this cracked heads or could the water pump freeze up? I couldnt tell where the smoke was comin from it wouldnt stay runnin long enough.

Oh and also I was fillin it up with wtaer to get it home n it's prolly frozen. Could it just be because the water is frozen inside the water pump and stuff?

Yup, your water pump just froze up. you have to replace it. I would bet the pulley isnt spinning so the belt is rubbing against it and screeching and smoking. Just happened to me last week

And by froze i mean the bearings went out, its got nothing to do with water freezing

Well i put a hair dryer on it for a min n it spins but im still changin it. Everything is frozen waterwise. Prolly even the block. I dun see how though there was still some antifreeze in there too but I guess not just enough. Also it made a big popping noise when I tried to start it one time. Any clue what that could be. Also I got 1 more bolt to get the water pump but the damn power steering shit is in the way and I don't know how to take it off. Ahhhhh I wanna go insane.

I got 1 more bolt on the waterpump but I can't figure out how to get this damn power steering pump moved or w/e i've been working on it for an hour or so.

Finally got it fixed. Works great now. Stupid autozone.com never said nothing about taking off the throttle body and coil packs. But anyways it's fixed and running good. Now let's see what goes wrong next. LoL

when you do those why don't you drain the coolant system totally. I know i'm thinking of changing my waterpump just for good measure and so i don't have much to worry about. I'm changing the opti anyway, might as well change the pump when i have it off:D Good deal though man, glad you got it fixed~Cole~