Water Pump

Just alerting everyone with a high mileage vehicle that checking the water pump could save alot of time and money as far as blown head gaskets and other major repairs.
After doing a total engine repair on my 97 wagon 3.0L i found that a $50 water pump could have saved me over $900 in parts if it had been caught alot earlier. This car has over 314,000 miles on it. First the heat was a little cooler than normal and then the temp started going up slowly when in traffic.
After tearing down the whole motor less the cam shaft, the water pump impeller was totally worn down to just a flat piece of metal.
Hope this can help someone prevent a major motor overhaul like i have been doing.

Also if anyone knows how to remove the bolt on the harmonic balancer timing sprocket please email me. I can't seem to figure out how to break it loose so i can install a new one. Thanks for the info.

jim

Welcome to the forum. And appreciate pointers. Unfortunately, you should have registered for this forum and searched it a long time ago. The worn water pump impeller is a well known and often discussed topic on this forum.

-Rod

The worn water pump impeller is a well known and often discussed topic on this forum.
Yep, still don't understand why they don't make it out of some other kind of material, thermo plastic, aluminum, anything but what they use now.

By the way, our car has around 100,000 miles on it, should we be looking into replacing ours or do they generally last longer?

Yep, still don't understand why they don't make it out of some other kind of material, thermo plastic, aluminum, anything but what they use now. GIVE THAT MAN A CEEGAR! :worshippy 'Prolly 'cause they want us to have to buy water pumps. Look at the intake manifold composite material tough as nails and I see no reason they couldn't make it out of that or fiberglass or whatever will stand up well to circulating the water. I could understand it if a lot of cars ran real high pH acid coolant that ate up the blades, but this blades wearing out thing is absolutely ridiculous and I believe Ford should have done something about it long ago. Certainly has cost Ford owners a heck'ava lot of money and like Rod said, we see a lot of it here. And they wonder why American automobile sales are going down and people are switching to foreign cars. HULLO! What I wonder is why the Taurus is one of the worst about water pump blades wearing out, why don't other cars do the same?

GIVE THAT MAN A CEEGAR!
I don't smoke :lol:

Fiberglass is a good idea. I think if I ever replace mine I'll be painting a coat of that on the blades :wink: I also wonder why no aftermarket company has come out with one that is made better than the Ford one.

I got to pondering and remembered years ago they came out with a composite outboard propeller I bought and it was suppose to slip through the water easier and go faster, ya-da-ya-da. They used them on commercial crab bosts as well as recreational boats and we all thought they were great. Good thing is it is softer than aluminum metal prop and if the prop hits something undewter it doesn't send such harsh shockwaves through the drive train possibly stripping gears in the bottom end and over stressing the top end what we call "power head."

Anyway, I got'ta get in the street working so I did a quick Google search and came up with this so you can get a general idea about the prop composite material and I see no reson it wouldn't work on a vehicle water pump. http://www.piranha.com/show_article.php?id=2

you can get a general idea about the prop composite material and I see no reson it wouldn't work on a vehicle water pump.
Yep, this (http://www.piranha.com/) is exactly what I was talking about :wink: They could even design it so if anything ever happened to the blades (unlikely for a sealed system) you could just replace the blades instead of the entire pump. Imagine a water pump repair that would cost only 15-20.00 :eek: If I had some money to invest in this I would make this water pump for resale. All you'd need to do would be to buy a new water pump, remove the blades and make a mold of them, and then use that mold to make the composite blades, bim-bam-boom you're done, problem solved! Heck I'd even give them a lifetime guarantee :lol:

Roger all that. Been a long time since I had a fast outboard but I remembered that the props worked OK for the small outboards, say up to 50HP, but the big bores 150-200 HP the blades would actually bend unders stress and engine RPM's were higher so they canned them. I imagine they have that problem solved now. Vehicle water pump blades (impeller) not that long or wide so the bending syndrome wouldn't be a factor. Yeah, there's a better way, but my guess is they turn out water pumps in a sweat shop in Thialand for $2.00 a piece then the middle man sells them for $5.00 to the distributor parts house and we buy 'em retail for $50. bucks. 'Prolly exaggerrated the prices there, but you catch my drift . . .

We have to keep something in mind here: How many vehicle owners are there like us that really know much about their vehicles, let alone do-it-yourself maintenance and how many Taurus owner know about the pump blades wearing out prematurely? Obviously there IS a problem and IMO Ford should come out with a service bulletin or whatever saying check the blades at such and such mileage or years and replace as necessary. One thing for sure, the parts and labor to replace the pump would be a heck of a lot cheaper and less stressful on the mind and body getting the bad news it ran hot and blew a head gasket needing repairs to the tune of $1500. bucks. runaround AARRGGHH!

Now I talked myself into a state of, "water pump parinoia" and I'm going to have mine replaced Monday! :grinno: Just kidding . . .

at what mileage or how many years do you feel it would be prudent to replace the water pump as routine maintenance? Mines an 03 Vulcan 53.5K mi so that makes it five years old. Should I replace the water pump?
Yep, that's what I want to know. How long do these things last? Our car has 90K and the water temp reads fine BUT we don't know if the water pump is the original or not. Is it hard to replace? If not then I'd be willing to pull it off just to check the condition of the blades. I'm definitely a proactive maintence kind of guy, especially since winter is right around the corner and I don't plan on working on the car in the freezing cold :lol:

What would the motivating factor to be to change it now
Not being stranded, and not doing any premature damage to the other parts of the engine...

"Not being stranded, and not doing any premature damage to the other parts of the engine..." That works for me. That's called, PM or "preventive maintenance." I called the guy that runs a straight up garage and asked him what he thought. He said in 26 years he's sen maybe six pumps with the impeller (blades) worn down enough to cause problems. Said every pump was operating in extremely rusty coolant and his thinking is the rust/metal particles ate up the blades. I said high acidity and electrolosis 'prolly played a part, and he agreed. So there you go, my pump stays where it is, at least for now.

I looked at mine and doesn't like it would be an easy thing to R&R because the space is so limited and tight up against the wheel well.

I just talked with a Ford mechanic that I know and he said that it was fairly well known. I asked at what point should I start thinking about replacing it, and he said 100K. Mines at 90K now, so with winter on its way I'm going to be replacing mine before the first snowflake falls :grinyes: I called the parts store and they want around 90.00 for it AND it only has a one year warranty (they must know something :wink: ). I asked if there was one with a better warranty and he said that he listed one with a lifetime warranty but he had no price. So I asked him to check for me and when he came back on the phone he said it was no longer available. I wonder why... :smokin:

Guys, I'm going to be the nay-sayer in this group. I just replaced a perfectly good 196K miles water pump. It didn't 'wear down'--I was just playing shotgun mechanic and fixing everything people said.

Myself an engineer, I can tell you that it's steel because the tensile strength of cold-formed mild steel is 75ksi or so, where Aluminum would be max about 38ksi and glass-filled plastics can be in the high 20's. Fabrication costs for steel are much cheaper too. It could be made from some other material if More material is used, but then you have flow to consider. Granted, the bent-sheet fabrication used doesn't really have 'hydrodynamic' properties, that is, it just pushes water, in a low-tech fluid dynamics sort of way.

Impellers are often cast iron, which will have some good properties, but they still have the 'wear-away' and corrossion factors.

As for the way I got 195K out of mine? I've never even drained the radiator until this month. I suppose I lucked into low-ph water when the factory filled it, or maybe the previous owner (three+ years ago) did more than me. Doesn't look like he did. Antifreeze was brown.

I just replaced a perfectly good 196K miles water pump.
What year car? Which engine? Duratec?

mine's a '97 Vulcan (12-valve). btw, I think I put about two hours into the change not counting draining--which I did the day before. Easier than I ever imagined.

I thought this only applied to Gen 4 Duratec engines? Yours is a Gen 3 Vulcan which is a different design :)

"mine's a '97 Vulcan (12-valve). btw, I think I put about two hours into the change not counting draining--which I did the day before. Easier than I ever imagined." Same engine I have 03 Vulcan. Well, they say looks can be deceiving, but to me it looked like an arduous job. I changed the serpentine belt and my neighbor came over and held pressure on the idler to keep it slack so I could put the belt on and I thought that was sort'a tight place to work in. I rented the long handle and crows feet socket kit from Advance and took maybe 15 minutes.

Be Ye forewarned: If you change it be darn sure you draw a picture of the belt routing because doubtful you'd remember how it went on. I think I'll put changing the pump on the back burner for now. I put about 10K a year on it and maybe in a few years I'll consider a water pump change.

I looked at mine and doesn't like it would be an easy thing to R&R
Might want to at least hedge your bet and add something like this (http://www.prestone.com/products/coolingSystemTreatments.php#coolingSystemTreatment s4) or this (http://www.prestone.com/products/coolingSystemTreatments.php#coolingSystemTreatment s2) to keep it in good shape longer. Both treatments are designed to keep rust from harming your water pump. We use the first one. Spending 3 bucks now might be well worth it to keep from having to replace something later :wink:

The anti-rust I can get at WalMart but the treatment I have to go to NY to get it or order it on line.

In the 50's my step dad had a radiator repair shop long before they had the crimped top and bottom tanks and he was about as good as they come with cooling systems. He use to build all the radiators for the racers in Rockingham, NC lot of famous race car drivers patronized him. He was a smart man adn took some "water pump lubricant" sold in stores that was suppose to lube the pump seals and fight rust so common back then. He took some of the water pump lubricant and put it in a different container and sent it to a testing lab for analyses. Results came back, water soluble oil and food coloring. Ba-dabing! He ordered some water soluble oil and made his own and people swore by it being the best anti rust additive ever.

Back then the flues/tubes would develop small holes where they connected to the top or bottom tank and adding anti freeze made them leak more so fall of the year was the busiest time for radiator work. People use to watch him solder and he could actually make solder run uphill, it's all in knowing how much heat to put to it and how to angle the torch tip. Used Oakite to boil them out in a big tank and muratic acid to clean the leak then flux it good so the solder would stick and all that made fumes he breathed for many years and he always smoked a cigar so it took its toll on his lungs and finally took him out.

Long as you flush and change the anti freeze regularly and keep the pH in range there should be no rust in your system. Boats with Cummins engines they have a cannister with zinc connects with the cooling system to keep electrolosis eating on the zinc and not the engine cooling system.