2000 Trooper Timing Belt & Water Pump

[LEM]

My wife's Trooper has 124,000 miles on it and I am planning to have either a delaer or another garage replace the timing belt. Should I go ahead and have the water pump replaced at the same time even though there is no evidence of a leak, or should I just have the timing belt itself replaced and do the water pump on my own if and when it starts to leak? How big of a job is a water pump change on a Trooper? I've replaced the water pump on my Mustang and it wasn't too bad.

Your counsel is appreciated.

Larry

[rodeo02]

Once you have everything you need to out of the way for the T-belt replacement, the water pump is right in there as well. It's a snap to r/r at that point, hardest part from what I hear, is scraping the old gasket material from the block. If you plan to keep the troop, do the water pump. If it fails, you have to tear all the timing stuff out again. Keeping it or not, you will want to replace the spring loaded timing belt tensioner. It's a little cylinder shaped unit that pushes a tensioner pulley against the belt. The pusher/tensioners usually fail before the belt.
G/luck
Joel

[amigo-2k]

yep, do it now and I'm sure that when you hit 250k you can do it again, or just let it go til the belt breaks (won't hurt anything).

I'm seen a couple of folks here or 175K on the orginal belt.

Do it now and then forgetaboutit.