water pump

I have coolant leak that appears to be from water pump. Mechanic says that it is iternally mounted and must drop front of motor to replace. Quote $700. Vehicle is 1999 saturn sl2 1.9 dohc. Is he correct or trying to fleece me?

I know what the job consists of on a 1998 SL2 - and its not a big job. I think the 1999 Saturn SL2 are the same. You do have to do a little work from below, since a couple of the 6 or 8 bolts that hold the pump on the side of the engine block need to be reached from the lower side. The water pump is below the a.c. compressor, mounts into a recess on the side of the engine block. Many cars have water pumps that are far more 'internal' and harder to reach. The Saturn water pump would be sort of visible from above - if it werent black and dirty down where it is. You remove the passenger side front wheel, & the splash shield on that side next to the engine. This involves having the car jacked up somewhat, just enough to have the tire off of the ground.
Anyway, you may want to remove the radiator fan housing; to have more room. For me that involves unbolting the a.c. compressor to make a little more room to maneuver the fan assembly up. You dont have to disconnect any a.c. hoses though, you just hold it out of the way until the radiator fan and its housing are out of the way. Then you have to drain the coolant (the drain is reached from under the passenger side of the radiator). I dont think you need to remove the radiator hose - but when changing a water pump I usually change the radiator hoses too, unless I replaced them recently for other reasons. Actually you dont have to drain the cooling system, when you remove the water pump - the coolant will spill out anyway.
You will need to remove the serpentine belt (by rotating the tensioner with a 13mm or 14mm wrench), and remove the pulley of the water pump (its held on by 3 bolts with 10mm heads). This work will be easier to do if you support the engine bottom with a jack (have a piece of wood between the jack and the oil pan), and remove the upper motor mount. This lets you raise and lower the engine, and doing so makes it easier to remove and replace the serpentine belt, and to remove/replace the water pump pulley.
The water pump unbolts and will then be able to be pried off the side of the engine block. The new pump comes with a small rubber gasket. I use a little permatex RTV gasket makr to hold that gasket in place while I put in the bolts that hold the water pump on, and torque them to whatever the torque spec is.
Then you close the drain and refill the system, using the 'overflow' bottle as the fill point.
I would think a mechanic would be able to do the job in 2 or 3 hours. It took me slightly longer, but then I am retired and I dont hurry. Working on my Saturn is a leisure time activity for me.
Anyway, $700 seems high. By the way, the water pumps can be bought for $20 plus about $10 shipping from www.rockauto.com - so if the price includes more than a decent markup to $40 -$45 for the pump, you can buy one yourself and have him install it. If he refuses to do that - I would take my business elsewhere. I get a lot of stuff from rockauto. I pay with a credit card, and they usually arrive in 3 to 5 days. Its neat to be working on my car and have the FEDEX driver walk in the driveway and hand me the part of the car Im working on.

I also like to replace serpentine belts when they are more than 8 years old, and if the car has more than 100,000 miles on it, I like to replace the tensioner pulley and the idler pulleys for the serpentine belt. They arent very expensive either.

I just changed mine a few weeks ago. I got some bolts thru the wheel well, and some from the top. I removed the sepentine belt, and the shield in the wheel well. Pretty tight, but I wasn't doing much else that afternoon.

Mechanic must have a boat payment due. He's way over-charging. The pump is no where near internally mounted. Find a new mechanic.