richandhazel's Golf VR6

[richandhazel]

Water pump now removed, don't think this was doing much









My confidence in the head being OK is deteriorating fast

Also, where have the vanes gone

[SoundillusioN]

Woh! That's not good..... My thoughts exactly.. Where the feck have they gone!.....  Don't want to worry you too much but I have experienced this once and found out the hard way...  I had a very clean running sierra sapphire once, from nowhere the head started making a racket.  Really bad tappet noises, took the cam cover off to find lots of tiny metal shards.  Took the water pump and oil pump out and found what you see now.... My oil pump is what cooked mine I think.  Fingers crossed no damage is done.  Im guessing you didn't spot any metal when you drained the system but that could have gone some time ago now depending in what the previous owner had done with it.

Good luck mate.

[The Doc]

That water pump us fubar, I've never see one so bad 

[AudiA8Quattro]

How did you get the pump out Rich?
Did you find another way rather than lifting the engine.
I would flush the coolant system right out, it can't get into the engine like if oil pump failed.

[richandhazel]

No, had to tilt the engine, absolutely no way that will come out without doing so. I got away without having to loosen the exhaust. Removed the front mount bolt and loosened the rear one but didn't remove it completely. That way I could allow a small amount of lift to the rear of the engine and most of it at the front thereby preventing strain on the exhaust. I did have to remove the power steering pump attachment bolts to allow it to drop slightly as it was bulking on the subframe.

I'm going to run the hose pipe through the system today and hopefully flush out any crud and bits still lodged in there. As you say, the bits can't get into the cylinders or oil system but I am concerned that a coolant channel could be blocked so hopefully a 'powerflush' will clear it all out

Thanks for the loan of the bits and bobs yesterday

[richandhazel]

Woh! That's not good..... My thoughts exactly.. Where the feck have they gone!.....  Don't want to worry you too much but I have experienced this once and found out the hard way...  I had a very clean running sierra sapphire once, from nowhere the head started making a racket.  Really bad tappet noises, took the cam cover off to find lots of tiny metal shards.  Took the water pump and oil pump out and found what you see now.... My oil pump is what cooked mine I think.  Fingers crossed no damage is done.  Im guessing you didn't spot any metal when you drained the system but that could have gone some time ago now depending in what the previous owner had done with it.

Good luck mate.

As far as I know the oil pump is OK so that side of things should be fine.
I suspect that the major part of the damage to the water pump was done when the previous owner tried to start the car whilst the pump was frozen. That is why the serpentine belt snapped, the water pump didn't turn. He thought he had drained the whole system down but, as I soon discovered, there was still a fair amount trapped in the engine by the thermostat so only a partial drain down was accomplished. It may well be that when I drained the rest of the system down the bits popped out then but I wasn't looking for it and didn't notice.

[richandhazel]

Replacement pump ordered. Tried VW and they want £46.69 + VAT and its not in stock

Having read around a bit I have decided to go for the KWP from ECP at £36.37 delivered. From what I have read the KWP doesn't suffer any problems whereas the same doesn't appear to ring true for the Circoli at £24.62.

In the meantime I shall carry out the 'powerflush' and have a bit of a clean up in the engine bay.

[SoundillusioN]

Replacement pump ordered. Tried VW and they want £46.69 + VAT and its not in stock

Having read around a bit I have decided to go for the KWP from ECP at £36.37 delivered. From what I have read the KWP doesn't suffer any problems whereas the same doesn't appear to ring true for the Circoli at £24.62.

In the meantime I shall carry out the 'powerflush' and have a bit of a clean up in the engine bay.

Nothing like waiting for parts *sigh*  ah well, will give you chance to have a poke around and make sure evertything else is clean and OK....  hopefully the pump will be with you soon and you'll be up and running in no time.

[richandhazel]

Another little update:-

I plugged the hose pipe in here:-



......and you should have seen the state of the fluid that came out here to start with :-



......as you can see, now running clear. I also removed the thermostat housing assembly:-





.......and squirted a load of water into the head where the thermostat housing was bolted to:-



Its now running clear from everywhere so next job is to clean the mating surface, fit the new housings, thermostat, cap etc., and await delivery of the new pump, probably Wednesday, if I'm lucky Tuesday.

[Mr Blue]

wow check out that water pump