Looks like my water pump has bad bearings. It's making noise under acceleration and leaking. Not to mention it's loose. Turned around and parked it in the garage while I was still able to. I'll take a look at the Bentley manual and started searching you tube. Any tips? I don't think it's worth replacing the pump with a Stewart-Warner. Not for this car anyway. The alternative is bringing it to the dealer since I don't want to drive it anymore than I have to.
Water pumps and timing belts on the E30's really are not as major of a task as most people make them out to be. But one recommendation while your doing it is to do the front crank seal. Seen these leak right after a timing belt replacement. The stewart pumps are good pumps but you do pay for them.
I had a Stewart-Warner installed in my ti. I don't have any long term plans for the E30. Too many things are wrong with it. Had the timing belt changed last year. I am leaking some oil, not sure where. I looked at replacing the pump myself again. Determined it's going to be too messy in my garage or driveway. I have enough projects that I can do myself between my other cars and home.
IIRC, it's possible to change the water pump without pulling the timing belt, I'd have to be looking at a picture or at the tensioner pin, spring, and pulley, but when I had to do that, one of my mechanic friends told me how to get vice-grips in on the pin to keep tension on the spring and the timing belt taught, so the water pump could be pulled. As I recall, I needed to use pointy-jawed sorta needle-nose like vice grips, vs. the standard ones which have pretty beefy jaws. If you do the front crank seal, again, IIRC, it necessitates removing a "front-end-cover"(description as per Bentley) the bottom side of which bolts to the front end of the oil pan, and thus, this cover is sealed by the one-piece oil pan gasket. The Bentley manual says to remove the cover, being careful not to tear the oil pan gasket, and if the gasket is stuck to the cover, to cut it free with a knife (they don't do us the favor of saying exactly _how_ to cut it free). It is really, really, really, easy to tear off the front part of the oil pan gasket as you remove this cover - and, once torn, your options are to replace the oil pan gasket (yeehaw) or, if it's torn just in one place, hope to seal it up with something like RTV silicone sealant and HOPE you can get it applied without it getting into your oil pan, with the potential for it to start clogging up things like engine oil passages and what not. The Bentley manual does not stress anywhere near enough just how careful one need be in attempting to remove the front cover without, hopefully, damaging the oil pan gasket.
As easy as this one looks, I think it's just a bit more than I can handle. I can't have this car down for too long. It needs to be running before it gets too cold since my other car only has a set of Toyo T1R and R comps. Not very conducive in cold weather.
I think either pelicanParts or bavarianAutosport has a how to write-up on it . they call it something along the lines of 101 duy projects
I read some of the DIYs. It would have been a bit messy because of the antifreeze. I had a local guy do it for me. I still need to bleed it. I'm not seeing the water temp come up to normal.
