Coolant leak: is it my water pump?

lBasket

lBasket

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Alright, I've got a coolant leak. I am not sure if it's a hose or the water pump. All the threads I read about the water pump weeping out of the weep hole show coolant around the lip of the oil pan, and dripping down the crank pulley. My crank pulley is dry, fluid only on corner of oil pan where the lower rad hose is, is dripping down the house. Tiny leak on gasket of water pump up top, but definitely not what's leaking down the rad hose.

So I'm trying to figure out if I replace the water pump or not... where is the weep hole? Be nice if I could be "sure" it was dying.
 
Pumps never leak on top. Replacing a good part makes no sense. Somebody that is quite respected on this forum just recently posted that he's taken tons of these things off and they are almost never bad, in fact most look perfect. If it ain't broke it's a waste of money replacing it.

The weep hole is on the bottom of the pump, right where the shaft exits the pump behind the pulley. If coolant isn't leaking from that exact spot the pump is good.
 
pagrey said:
Pumps never leak on top. Replacing a good part makes no sense. Somebody that is quite respected on this forum just recently posted that he's taken tons of these things off and they are almost never bad, in fact most look perfect. If it ain't broke it's a waste of money replacing it.

The weep hole is on the bottom of the pump, right where the shaft exits the pump behind the pulley. If coolant isn't leaking from that exact spot the pump is good.
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Yeah, I mean I try not to dump money into working parts when I can't but I think the amount of symptoms I'm having make the peace of mind worth it before a trip to the desert... Not like I expected selling the jeep soon so it'll have to happen eventually, right?

Because there's the leak down below too... and the leak started after I changed the rad cap... and if I change the lower rad hose and it ends up being the pump that's 35$ of wasted coolant.... So for 150$ it feels worth the peace of mind to me.

Just for fun how can I tell if I wasted the money when I get the old one out? Fluid around the weep hole or will there be something on the inside indicating failure?
 
lBasket said:
it'll have to happen eventually, right?
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What will happen is the new one will go out in a year or two. Then the next new one will fail in another year and you'll wonder why the hell you took out a perfectly good one. If you kept the original it'll be a rusty turd so you wont even be able to bolt it back in. The list of parts this does really happen on is not short.
 
lBasket said:
The more I think about it the more I think it'd be a stupid move leaving it in when I have 195k miles and no history before a moab trip
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To me, you have described where you'd see coolant when it's leaking out of the weep hole. With that and 195k miles on it I'd replace it. That's a lot of miles for the factory water pump, neither of my OE water pumps lasted that long. Not to mention you're heading to Moab.
 
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I would probably replace if the water pump looks just as dirty/greasy as the rest of the engine. Unless you have evidence that is not the original water pump I'd say you're lucky it made it that long.
 
My cooling system gave me endless problems over the course of 5 years (pinhole in upper rad. hose, heater core seeping coolant onto floorboard, bad radiator cap, my coolant was brown and I would see sludge on the bottom of the rad. cap everytime I checked it. Eventually I blew the top tank of my radiator and decided to do an overhaul on the entire cooling system. Best $600 I've spent on my TJ. It's easy work if you do it all at once but replacing things piece by piece as they wear out sucks.
 
Yeah it's hard to know forsure, the front of the engine is pretty evenly dirty from my cleaning and wheeling. It wasn't in great shape when I got it so without any service records I think it's safe to assume the PO didn't do it just as a maintenance item due to the mileage
 
Okay been a bit but yeah my water pump was dead I pulled it and it was pretty obvious it had been all coming from the weep hole:
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So I replaced it and it leaked out of the hard line going to the heater core. I think I cracked it or something moving it to the new pump - I had to do it again. So if you're doing this I'd probably just replace that hardline at the same time...
 
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