Thread: Water pump bearing

Can you buy a new bearing and seal for a TDI water pump or is it a throwaway?The pump works fine with no noise but there is movement at the pulley and it's tight on the shaft. Pat

Originally Posted by vnx205

I don't want to cause a panic and my experience may not be typical, but I was astonished at how quickly and completely the waterpump failed on my Tdi300.
It was definitely not leaking and was not making any noise.
I had just returned from a 2600km return trip to Qld to collect my slide-on camper. The next morning less than 1 km down the road I noticed a noise from the engine. As soon as I found a spot where I could turn up a side street, I stopped and turned the engine off.
Fortunately I had not gone far enough for the engine to be up to operating temperature let alone overheated.
The bearing had completely collapsed, the fan belt had jumped off as the engine stopped and there was coolant pouring rather than dribbling down the front of the engine.
I couldn't believe there had been no leaking or noises to give me some warning.

Mate i know where you are coming from!, There were some non genuine pumps with plastic impellers, those ones were absolute crap, went thru three in 18,000ks.

The problem was the tiny ridiculous front tapered bearing would run dry and proceed to collapse.

After a massive case of the chits i pulled one apart and compared it with the original ( that only did 120000ks any way) and found on the after market one there was a hole drilled in the inside steel housing that supports the bearing, my theroy is when the grease gets hot it seeps out into the out side alloy housing thus the bearing runs dry!. Kar craft silver water have one made in england that is very close to the original, brass impeller etc, good luck!

Cheers Sumo