When I sit at a red light, the temp begins to rise slowly. As soon as I pull away (on green), the temp returns to Normal Operating Temp. I'm thinking the water pump may be starting to fail, but I want second opinions. The pump is looking nasty on the outside, and I have no idea if it has ever been changed. I have about 190,000 miles on it. So what do you think is up? Thanks!

 

Have you checked your fan clutch?

With the engine cold, try to spin the fan. How easy/hard is it?

 

Can you pull off the serpentine belt and check to see if there is any play in the water pump bearing. Replaced my water pump at 155,000 miles last year it was working fine but did not want to risk being stranded and overheated! Been there before in my old BMW E36 not fun! Anyways not that hard of a job but you do have to rent the fan pulley clutch removal tool. I did replace upper and lower hoses and thermostat. 190,000 is a lot of miles and sounds like a bad water pump or possibly fan clutch like the previous member stated.

 

I'll check out the fan clutch after work today. Thank you for your input/s

 

Yes a water pump can fail under differnt styles of load I had 1 that the impeller was loose and would spin only about half of the time so the temp would rise while in traffic of at a stop light good luck.

 

I've called all the usual suspects that furnish tools when you by a part. They do not have one. Is there another method?

 

No you need the tools! you can rent them from an auto parts store for free, just pay the deposit.


More pics of rental tool


My pic did not work let me try again.


Here is a pic of the two tools in action.

Hope this helps! The fan clutch gm tool I bought at action auto parts for about 10 bucks and the other one I rented at Orielys auto parts.

 

I called several of the auto stores with the purpose of renting the tool. None of them carried them.

What I ended up doing was taking a piece of rebar, heating it with a propane torch and pounding the end flat. After that I drilled a hole in it, removed one of the pulley hub bolts and attached it. Then I could use a large cresent wrench to remove the fan clutch.

Before replacing the old water pump, I when to the hardware store and bought four 3-inch bolts. I cut the heads off of them and cut a slot for a screwdrive in the end where I removed the head. I then threaded these into the holes that mount the water pump.

This allowed me to coat the gasket with RTV, slide the gaskets on, keep them in place and then finally slide the water pump on. I them removed each of the studs one by one and replaced it the the proper bolt with the sealant on it.

It really worked pretty slick.