C5 Water Pump R&R

Riley P

Riley P

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Alright, write up coming soon. I didn't take enough pictures as I was fighting daylight but I'll try to explain as best I can for anyone that wants to tackle this.
A thanks to Manny first of all for giving me the leap of faith that this is an easy job.

One question I will have for Manny (or anyone) is that despite my best efforts, I got coolant all over the belt and smog pump(?)pulley and harmonic balancer. Now my belt squeaks. I took it to the car wash and tried to pressure wash the belt and front of engine as much as I could. The squeaking stopped!.....for the first three blocks......then it was back and again, this morning, no squeak initially, then a few blocks later, constant chirping! It's the typical belt squeaking/chirping noise. Is this going to go away or should I break clean the crap out of the front of my engine or do I have to replace the belts to silence my car again?
 
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Riley P said:
Alright, write up coming soon. I didn't take enough pictures as I was fighting daylight but I'll try to explain as best I can for anyone that wants to tackle this.
A thanks to Manny first of all for giving me the leap of faith that this is an easy job.

One question I will have for Manny (or anyone) is that despite my best efforts, I got coolant all over the belt and smog pump(?)pulley and harmonic balancer. Now my belt squeaks. I took it to the car wash and tried to pressure wash the belt and front of engine as much as I could. The squeaking stopped!.....for the first three blocks......then it was back and again, this morning, no squeak initially, then a few blocks later, constant chirping! It's the typical belt squeaking/chirping noise. Is this going to go away or should I break clean the crap out of the front of my engine or do I have to replace the belts to silence my car again?
Click to expand...

Use brake clean to get rid of any residue :D

Manny
 
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The first thing you need is to gather the right selection of tools.

I used:
Needle nose pliers
Flat screw driver
15 mm deep socket with 3/8" drive ratchet
10 mm shallow and deep sockets, 3/8" drive
2" extension for 3/8" drive
3/8" swivel socket
Shallow bucket
1/4" drive ratchet with 2" extension
1/4" drive 8 mm shallow socket
Torque Wrench
Anti Seize
Not enough brake clean
Ramps made from 2" x 12" boards

It's not necessary but I drove my car up on some home made ramps. This just gave a little more room to get to the radiator drain plug.

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1. Start draining the radiator because this takes a loooong time. I bet it took almost an hour and a half to drain because it just kept dribbling out. I think it took this long because the engine was cold and the thermostat was shut and the engine has to drain through the little pin hole in the thermostat. Anyway, onto the instructions. First thing (with a cold engine) remove the cap on the surge tank. Now take the 1/4" drive with the 2" extension and put it in the petcock (no I didn't make this name up :D). Turn it counter clockwise a quarter turn. I found it almost turned all the way then on the last 16th of a turn it popped out all the way. Don't force it though, these things are known to break. You can pull out on the petcock to help it as you are turning it.

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2. Remove the air bridge. Mine is some unit I've never seen and is held on with worm gear clamps. I used the 8mm socket on the worm gear drives as it is easier than the flat blade screw driver. Even if your air bridge is different, I'm sure this isn't too difficult for anyone to do so, lets move on and assume the radiator is done draining. Tighten the petcock a quarter turn back to it's original position.

Picture of the electrical connection to remove on the air bridge

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3. Once the air bridge is removed, take some pictures of how the belt is routed. Then take your 15 mm deep socket and place it on the bolt for the tensioner pulley. Push it towards the drivers side to give the belt some slack. I found the belt still pretty tight and had to peel it off the pulley. The deep socket allows the belt to be pulled off the tensioner without getting in the way like a wrench would.

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Just let the belt drop down, don't bother taking it out as it is not necessary and you'll have to just restring the thing.

4. Have a look at how the hose clamps are aligned. Mine were pretty much in perfect position. I just put the pliers on either side of the clamp and squeezed them open. Using one hand on the pliers and one hand on the bottom of the clamp, I guided the clamps up the hoses to get them out of the way.

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There are four hoses to remove: Upper radiator hose, lower radiator hose, and two smaller heater hoses. Once the clamps are moved, I found it actually pretty easy to remove the hoses.

5. Removing the bolts for the water pump. There are six bolts holding on the water pump. Before I even started loosening them, I took a sharpie and numbered the bolts from 1 to 6 so I could but them back in the same holes. Using the 10 mm shallow socket with 2" extension, I cracked the three bolts on the passenger side as they were easy to get to. Then I cracked the top and bottom bolt on the drivers side using the deep 10 mm socket. For the center bolt on the driver's side the ABS unit is in the way to use the ratchet with a socket so your options are to use a swivel socket or use an adjustable gear drive wrench which I used....however, now I probably would have just used the swivel socket.

Picture of the three bolts on the passenger side.

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Picture of the three bolts on the drives side. Bolt #5 will not come out as the ABS unit is in the way so it will just come out with the water pump.

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(I have new belts, they'll be on in the Spring)

With all the bolts cracked, I now started taking them out all the way. They looked like crap! Two were clean, the other 4 were covered in black crap. As I didn't have a wire brush, I just cleaned them as best I could with brake clean and a cloth. The threads however, were in good condition.
 
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6. Removal of the water pump! Now that the bolts are out and the hoses are off, the water pump just pulls off. I found it easier to get out of the engine with the electrical connectors for the A/C and throttle body removed.

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Here is a picture of the back side of the pump. It's upside down in the photo.

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There was residue from the old gaskets on the surface. I took a razor blade scraper and LIGHTY scraped off the residue. Be careful not to gouge the surface!!!! I took some brake clean and wiped the surface between light scrapings. I did the same thing on the engine. Here is a pic with the gasket still stuck in place.

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Pull the old gaskets off and make sure the rubber comes with it. I cleaned the surface of the engine in the same way I cleaned the water pump.
On a side note, now would be a GREAT time to brake clean all the surfaces of the pulleys and the belt otherwise the belts could squeal.

Tomorrow, I'll finish with the reassembly.
 
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Riley make sure you add some silicone on the water pump bolts when you put back together .
 
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Hey BH! I'm going to replace the belts in the Spring. That is great advice! I never thought of cleaning out the pulleys but it will be on my list now!

Manny, I used a very thin coating on anti seize on the threads. PM sent, however, it would be nice to hear your advice so people reading this can get this done correctly. If silicon is required, I will pull each bolt individually....except for bolt 5! That ABS unit is in the way!

Just talked with Manny, he said that the anti-seize shouldn't hurt anything but isn't good so for everyone's future reference, just use a dap of RTV.
 
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Riley.. Great work!.
Sometimes it just takes a nudge to venture forward on a job like this.
You have saved some $$$$ and learned a few things along the way.
I have some jobs like this waiting to be done. I just need that nudge.
I'll be putting together my C3 brake caliper rebuild as a photo-essay soon.
We all get to learn.
thanx for sharing.............graham
 
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Not really much for pictures on the reassembly. More just some pointers.

The most difficult part is getting the gaskets to stay while installing the water pump. The problem is that the old gaskets were stuck to the block and after cleaning everything, well obviously the new ones won't.:D

The only way I figured to get it completed was by installing all the bolts in the water pump, hanging the gaskets on the bolts and slowly sliding the water pump into the ready position. This isn't too easy as the bolts are just sitting in the pump and any forward movement and they want to slide forward and out of the water pump dropping the gaskets! So be slow and watch all the bolts. I lifted the pump into place about half an inch from the block and threaded in one bolt part way on the passengers side then one bolt on the drivers side. A couple difficult checks and I could see the gaskets were still in place so I hand tightened all the bolts.

Finish torquing the bolts at 11 lb-ft on the first pass and 22 lb-ft on the second pass.

Re-install everything in the reverse order you removed it. I never found any difficulty reinstalling the hoses, they went on quite easily but I've heard of people using a little dielectric grease or Vaseline to get them on.

Now, double check every bolt and don't forget the electrical connectors. Make sure the hose clamps are back in the correct position.

With everything buttoned up, start filling the serge tank with the old coolant if it is good or new DEX-COOL coolant. You can get the premixed stuff or the pure stuff and mix it 50/50 with distilled water. Don't use tap water or drinking water.

I filled the surge tank with with all the coolant that I drained besides the stuff that came out of the water pump. This filled the surge tank up to the cold mark. I started the car and let it run for about a minute then put the cap back on the tank. I let the engine get up to temperature by checking the DIC and checked the level in the coolant tank constantly. The engine got up to 197 then came down to 195 so I knew it was at least cooling. I jumped in my car and went for a very short drive around the block as it goes up hill and back down hill. Once home, I parked the car and waited until the next day to check the level and the serge tank was almost empty. I purchased a gallon of the premixed DEX-COOL as I didn't need much and filled it to the Max Cold level. I went out for another drive and once parked, found the coolant was sitting half an inch above the cold mark. Lastly, the most important step in seeing that I had to leaks was sitting back and having a nice beer knowing my car is back up and running again!
 
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