Well, my heart-attack is over. What I thought was my front differential leaking due to a noisy front end and damage or bad seals turns out to be coolant slowly leaking from what appears to be the water pump. The coolant was surprisingly greasy due to the engine crud it was washing away and was dripping right onto the front differential.

I can't be 100% sure it's the waterpump but the oil pan and front part of the engine is soaked. Although not previously leaking all over the place, for about 6 months now I've been losing a bit of coolant every 100km and have been smelling it when the engine running. I was assuming that it was seeping through something very slowly and burning up.

My I ask... Would a leaky water pump be caused by a bad seal or by bad bearings? And what am I looking at having to remove to get to the water pump on these trucks? It seems to be really deep in there.

 

Take off the belt, remove the top fan shroud if your still running a clutch fan, remove the radiator hose, and 2 heater core hoses, then it is 4 bolts.... REALLY easy to change...

 

Thought it was 6? Haven't had to change it in a while so I could be wrong.

 

it might be 4 or 6, either way it is super easy to change...

 

That's it??? Good stuff. that is indeed easy. Thanks.

 

Yup thats what I said the first time I did it. These trucks aren't too hard to work on as far as basics go. Especially when you have the help of some of the gurus on here.

 

Only thing that sucked for me was no drain petcock on the radiator. I ended up getting a bosch replacement one from an amazon vender for really cheap. I think it was like 50-100 bucks. The water pump gaskets are notorious for leaking, but I figured I have the coolant drained might as well change the pump and tstat...

 

pretty sure its 6...but it is very easy to change, just looks worse than it is...

 

change the t-stat while your at it, might want to find out what the oil leak is to, since it will be easier to remove the crank pulley and maybe change out a gasket or seal.

Dustin

 

Before you dump cash on the water pump, crawl under there and look for a trail. If the water pump itself is leaking, there will be coolant from either behind the wp pulley or coming out of the weep hole. If not, try and look where the water pump mates to the block, it may just be the gaskets that are bad. More than once I've seen the water pump gaskets deform and leak.