Signs of a bad water pump?

[Olin18]

I am wondering if there are any tell tail signs that a water pump is going bad?

The reason I ask is becaue I have heard in the past that often a water pump will make funny niose before it poops out. And my 2.5L has about 100K on it, and the water pump is orig.

My jeep has a funny noise, that seems to come and go, and I am trying to figure out what that noise is. And the cooling system in my YJ has been a weak point for a while. Thanks for any help.

[kerryp]

A water pump will sometimes develop a high pitched squeak or whine when it begins to fail due to the bearing going bad, sometimes you can take the belt loose and see how much play is in the shaft, and you can check the weep hole, which is a hole that is in the body of the pump on the dry side of the pump, once the pump starts going bad water will begin to make its way to the dry side and ooze from the hole. Unfortunately, most mfgs. seem to put the hole in a place where its hard to see.

kerryp

[TiminMb]

One day while checking the fanbelt, I noticed significant up and down play in the pulley onthe waterpump. Never leaked a drop, but made the occassional strange scraping sound. When I removed the pump, I could see the impeller had been scraping up against the flat surface inside, making that noise. Must be a good flexible seal, because despite all that play and movement, it never leaked.

[barfnick]

I had a strange sound under the hood of my TJ from the day I bought it (used). I just ignored it for about 15,000 miles and the day I traded it in on my wife's car, the steering pump exploded on the way to the dealership. Lucky for me, I had disclosed the problem when we made the trade deal, so they still took it on trade. The moral is, don't ignore it to long.

Take the fan in your hand and move it forward and back you can tell its alittle worn by doing that... [img]images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[jps4ever]

Mine was not too hard to find. Ugly noise, sloppy fan and leaking like a sieve! [img]images/graemlins/cussing.gif[/img]

[Olin18]

Thanks for the replys everyone. That gives me a great place to start looking, and trouble shooting. The Idea of a steering pump exploding is kind of unnerving. At least it happed on someone elses clock... At least you didn't have to fix it.

[RRich]

One sure way of telling the water pump failed is by the
gigantic hole in your radiator where the fan went part
way through.

Let it go long enough, the bearing gets super hot, locks up,
the shaft breaks and the spinning fan makes a nice big vent
hole in the radiator.
Not fun.

100,000 miles and you wonder, especially since you said
you've had cooling probs, --
Like they say - "an ounce of prevention ...)

Sometimes that seal doesn't leak, but it sucks air into
the cooling system, which collects in spots and can cause
cooling problems.