Water pumps

[sawood12]

Could be that the tension on the belt was holding things together and as soon as that was released things were free to move. Clearly with 10mm of movement of the waterpump pulley you'd not maintain belt tension at all. Lucky escape there! The specialist I used (Zentrum) always checked everything he exposed no matter what job he did and provided a status report and list of any advisories with the invoice. You always left feeling you knew your car so much better than you did before.

 

[sulzeruk]

Finally managed to get my own S2 on the ramp for a set of belts and water pump. The water pump had been getting noisy and dribbling a bit of water out of it. All the tensioners and rollers were pretty noisy and dry sounding. The covers were covered in oil inside although the belts looked quite fresh. Another quality garage job by the looks of it! On cutting through the belts, I had a feel at the water pump pulley thinking there may be a bit of play only to find about 10 mm of movement in the pulley! The bearings had obviously colapsed so I don't know how the thing was still going round. The car didn't sound bad at all, it got a good thrashing coming back from the TIPEC meeting on Wednesday night so am very glad it didn't decide to chuck it on the way home!
Worth checking those pumps gents!
Alasdair

 

[cuffn]

If you are talking about fore and aft movement it could have been that the internal circlip had broken. I had this issue on a newly rebuilt pump and was told that it is only the circlip that keeps the shaft from moving forward and that they do go sometimes! I had to have another replacement under the warranty. Cheers