Engine water pump is dead

water pump is dead

yup, a whole 60K miles before the bearing is squealing horribly and loosing fluids.

However, the replacement job seems very simple. just pull the belt, a few screws.. and the impeller shaft & bearing slide right out. The water pipe isn't part of the same assembly like on older toyotas!

Haven't even taken it off yet. I already know the problem is bearing failure. It either ran out of lubrication or just wore out.

probably okay still. mine is actually loosing fluid and you can hear it 2 blocks away it is soo loud.

what can I say.. made in usa.

1sttoyotaparts in renton supposedly has one for $50 new. But, I have a feeling they'll cancel my order and want the full dealership price of $114.88.. we'll see if they turn out to be bait-n-switchers or not.

got the oem one for $50!! anyway, installed the new one today and did a coolant flush at the same time.

First, the coolant...
For some reason the previous owner of my car refilled it with the cheapest green stuff he could find instead of buying the toyota long life stuff, so as a result it was a mix of red and green coolant and didn't look that great together. I replaced it with 65% mixture Prestone DexCool extended life 5 year / 150K (orange colored).

Second, the pump...
When I pulled the old pump I found a bunch of white crystalline deposits all over the thing and around the bearing. I'm guessing the coolant was bad or this is some sort of aluminum reaction byproduct caused by having charged coolant. So the cause of death is gummed up bearing full of unknown white crystalline substance (lots of it).

The install...
The install wasn't too bad. However, I found out that my original water pump was a Type I whereas the new models they sell are a Type II. Body wise they look about the same except the I has ridges for the 2 A bolts and the Type II does not. The Type II also has the pulley wheel spaced further from the body of the pump. They stuck on an extra wide pulley to make the part still work with older corollas (aka 8th gen). Those ridges in the frame affect the length of bolts you can use. As a result, going from a Type I to a Type II involved buying 2 of the shorter 'A' bolts. The Toyota part # on these is 91511-G0622. Other than that it went like clockwork, very simple install.

Hopefully I can trace down the cause of the white crystal stuff.

yeah I got the prestone dexcool stuff because they say it is specially made for aluminum radiators & blocks.

I'll probably flush it again with more than just water when I hit 100K, hopefully just having high grade coolant should fix things until then.