Water pump failure

[Ianmc]

Seemingly a common enough failure but have not seen this extreme before.

Impeller had sheared off the spindle, causing the pully to move sideways, belt coming off and obviously loosing cooling, power steering and charging.
M52 engine, couldn't see brand on pump but is has been on car for 10 years/70K miles to my knowledge. Spindle was loose in housing so bearings could have failed causing the impeller to sheer or metal fatigue in impeller caused bearings to fail; either way not good.
I think the common wisdom is to replace the water pump at 60K mile intervals, which seems sound preventive maintenance. New pump was £72.

We were lucky in this case as no further damage was caused. Fortunately speed was under 30mph and we limped home in minutes.

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Damn these cars that break down only 25 years after the warranty runs out. I'd give BMW the length of my tongue over that.

But I've not seen one quite like that before, some of them have plastic impellors and they seem to disintegrate into a million pieces and disappear, much better having it stay (relatively) together, no need to worry about little bits getting wedged somewhere important.

 

[Stevo7682]

Almost a mandatory part of extended maintenance regime these days to change the pump and coolant every coolant change ( so 3 or 5 yrs depending on coolant type)
Think zeds with viscous fan units don't help as strain on pump from inside and out.
Stephen .

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Surely a viscous fan would put less strain on the pump being as most of the time it's going to be idling, and even when it does engage it's not a solid unit, there'll be a (small) amount of slip between the two. I've known plenty of motors with viscous hubs in the past and it never seemed to be a problem.
Still, it certainly won't hurt to change the pump every few years, and compared to the potential price of not changing it, pretty cheap, too.

 

[Zephyr]

Water pump is on schedule for every 50.000 miles.